The Eldest of the Pleiades - OLD VERSION
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: Maia discovers an uncle, her last living relative: Sirius Black, wanted for murder. She goes to live with him, in the HQ of the Order. Maia went to Muggle school, but is a witch. OotPhoenix, with a lot of changes. This is a DISCONTINUED VERSION! For the new one, see my profile.
1. Chapter 01

**A.N.**: Hi everyone. Instead of writing the 10,000-word dissertation due in 1 May, I decided to revise _Pleiades_, and I'm happy to say I'm working on Chapter 41, so I can now upload each edited chapter without breaking continuity.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_01_

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><p>As a soft knock echoed on the front-door, she dried her eyes on her 'magic' handkerchief, the hand-embroidered one prone to stop <em>anyone<em>'s tears—except her own—and paused before the little round mirror set into the engraved mantelpiece over the round fireplace; her eyes were red, her cheeks pale and tearstained, her cheekbones more pronounced than ever, though she had tried to bring some colour to her wan cheeks by going for a bicycle ride to the beach, absentmindedly collecting a basketful of fresh muscles, intent on making _moules marinières_ for supper.

She had never been allowed to sit still; she always had to _do _something, and her own work-ethic meant the scent of freshly-baked bread and scones was pervasive in the little Hobbit-hole cottage she had lived in with her great-aunt: She was expecting this visitor, though they were rare. For all the travelling she had done with her great-aunt, she had spent a great amount of time in their little Hobbit-hole, carved into a gentle hill here in the middle of nowhere. The surrounding meadows were exquisite, speckled with spring wildflowers, swans gliding by idly in the little streams that carved and gurgled their way lazily through the earth. Untouched by modernity, the panelled warren and the spread of meadows and woods now seemed desolately lonely without the woman who had made it home.

Since the loss of her great-aunt, she had been unable to control the magic she could so usually handle with such dexterity: she hadn't meant to, but when William had scared her, trying to kiss her and not stopping, when she was upset and needing someone to hug her, he had suddenly turned into a gelatinous tangle of sucker-lined tentacles and deep-set eyes.

She had transfigured him back, and had fled, leaving him utterly confused: desperate to talk to her great-aunt, she had collapsed in a fit of tears as soon as she had reached the Hobbit-hole, her sobs so violent she hadn't been able to speak when two middle-aged men in sweeping robes had knocked on the door: they said they had come from the Improper Use of Magic Office, from the Ministry of Magic.

Her great-aunt had always told her she had a lot of magic, was very talented, but for some reason her great-aunt had kept her from the magical world, the one she vaguely knew existed, that her parents and the rest of her family except her great-aunt had been a part of, but she had been raised for the most part in the world of the non-magical.

Every time she had used magic consciously—the occasions becoming more and more frequent and creative the older she became—her great-aunt would take her out of school and take her travelling for a little while. Her great-aunt may not have been a witch, but she had a great many foreign contacts, and if she knew nothing of the _English_ wizarding culture, she had learned a _lot_ in foreign countries, particularly European, Russian, and the most ancient of wizarding cultures, Middle-Eastern, even African.

The wizards from the Improper Use of Magic Office had been staggered to realise she possessed no wand, and had never been to a magical school. She had explained, after a lot of hot tea soothed her, still crying softly, that she had received a letter from Hogwarts years ago, but had declined the offer to remain at home and take care of her great-aunt, who was far older even than her little friend Bathilda, whose finished biography her great-aunt had been in the process of self-editing before sending it off for publication.

She had been let off with a warning, but Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore had been contacted.

Maia had already sent Professor Dumbledore a note: Instructed by her great-aunt to owl a letter to him the moment she died, Maia had done as instructed the night her great-aunt had passed away, and Professor Dumbledore had arrived the next morning, to help with arrangements and things, but, he being the greatest wizard of the age, Professor Dumbledore hadn't been able to remain, and it was only this second letter to him, not from Maia but about her, that had drawn the professor to her little Hobbit-hole once again, several days later.

Maia was conscious of her magic: she had only to concentrate, and things would happen as she wished. Having gone through some of her mother's antiquated schoolbooks, discovered in a trunk in the attic one evening when she had been sent up to collect a trunk into which they could pack their things before heading to her great-aunt's friend in the Congo, she was sure she would be able to study at Hogwarts: unless Professor Dumbledore deemed her breach of the International Statute of Secrecy serious enough to endorse the Improper Use of Magic Office's suggestion that she be…punished, instead of properly tutored in the subtle and often extremely complex arts of magic.

Professor Dumbledore was a figure Maia knew from teas with her great-aunt, and from listening in on her great-aunt's interviews with Bathilda Bagshot for her biography: as a child, he had entertained her with miniature fireworks, working models of unicorns and hippogriffs, pretty things that twinkled and smelled beautiful and sounded like glass church-bells, sweets so sumptuous she could remember every detail of them to this day. When he had arrived the morning after her aunt had passed away, he had been just as she remembered, unchanged, still as stately and uncompromisingly kind as ever, and he had mourned a woman who had long been his friend: he had helped with the arrangements, her great-aunt's burial in the family plot, but he had had to leave again, but not before explaining the contents of her aunt's letter to him: With her death, Professor Dumbledore had been named legal guardian to Maia until her seventeenth birthday, and it was his decision what became of her, what he thought would be best for her.

As soon as she had hung up his rich crimson travelling-cloak on the long row of hooks by the perfectly round front-door, Professor Dumbledore apologised.

"What do you have to apologise for?" Maia asked, perplexed.

"I left you to your own devices after you lost the person dearest to you in the world," Professor Dumbledore said. "You must forgive me, my dear."

"You're very busy," Maia said quietly: she wasn't a fool. She knew Professor Dumbledore, the greatest wizard in the world, wouldn't just spend his time waiting for letters from orphaned girls to arrive by owl. Indicating Professor Dumbledore into the parlour, Maia followed.

Polished chairs heaped with hand-embroidered cushions stood about the carved, inlaid table under the large, round window with a deep sill overflowing with plants and candle-sconces with burn-marks up the walls; two little armchairs stood around the little round fireplace, surrounded by footstools and a tiny little chair fit for a little girl, little spindly tables cluttered with photographs and trinkets, candlesticks and lamps, little bits of sewing and projects of lace-making and quilting, and little postcard-sized watercolour paintings leaning up against photograph frames, and delicate ornaments, tiny animals made of coloured glass and semi-precious stones; little vases of wildflowers dotted the room, books and photographs were stacked on every surface, and not a sign that the world had entered the technological age showed. Maia's room was a different story entirely.

"Mm, a veritable feast!" Professor Dumbledore smiled happily, glancing at the spread Maia had set out on the table, including all of the things she knew Professor Dumbledore had liked to eat when he had been invited to tea by her aunt in times past. Maia was exceptionally talented at _patisserie_, and English cakes and heavy puddings; her great-aunt had been a cake-fiend, could, well past her nineties, demolish an entire cake to herself if Maia didn't hide them properly. Professor Dumbledore sat down, shaking his long muscovite sleeves out of the way.

"Tea?" she asked, sitting down opposite, and Professor Dumbledore smiled.

"Thank you. That would be very welcome," he said. "I've had a long morning. And I hear you have had a rather excitable week." Maia glanced up, pouring the tea.

"So, you—you received the letter the Improper Use of Magic Office said they would send?" she asked tentatively.

"I did indeed," Professor Dumbledore nodded. "Again, I must apologise. It seems I have made an incredible oversight in overlooking your magical education—or lack thereof. I had little idea you were not receiving magical tutelage."

"I…I did receive _some_," Maia said, though she flushed: when she said she had received some education in magic, she meant she had found, stolen and then devoured her mother's old schoolbooks, trying to control and temper her magic as she attended a non-magical school. Professor Dumbledore gave her a look over the top of his half-moon spectacles that made her suspicious of him reading her thoughts, and she flushed again, and explained.

"I was always a fan of self-education," Professor Dumbledore said, far from scolding her for stealing her mother's schoolbooks while her non-magical great-aunt could do nothing to help if things had gone awry.

"I haven't managed to do quite a few of the spells," Maia confessed. "Some of the animals required to Transfigure, and I've only studied the theory of Potions, and I've been trying with Charms, but without a wand—"

"You have been doing all this without a wand?" Professor Dumbledore asked, looking her dead-on, and Maia flushed, again feeling like she was being X-rayed. She nodded. Professor Dumbledore gave her a measuring look, then seemed to come to a decision.

"Your great-aunt named me your guardian, until the advent of your seventeenth birthday," he said, and Maia nodded. "Therefore it is up to me to help encourage you do that which I believe will be beneficial to you. I understand, from your great-aunt's letters, that you have attended a Muggle school? And that you expect to receive a packet of letters with results from your examinations?"

"Yes. My A-levels," she nodded: Her friends all thought she was freak, due to the fact she had been taking A-level classes as a fifteen-year-old. Not the best of timing on her aunt's behalf to fall ill during Maia's exams, but that was no fault of hers, and Maia was sure she had the results she anticipated, if not better.

"And your aunt took you travelling, whenever you used magic at this school?" Professor Dumbledore said. "Taking you to visit witches and wizards in foreign countries."

"My aunt said it would be beneficial to make ties early in life, and learn other cultures and languages, more than it would me going off to school," Maia said; she was still wrapping her head around that, but she knew she did love her knowledge of "Muggle" literature, music, languages, fashion and _culture_, something her great-aunt said _no_ witch or wizard ever learned about firsthand. Combined with the skills her great-aunt had taught her since birth—Maia had learned to knit before she could write, and had been playing the violin and the piano just as long: she made her own clothes and lace; did delicate beadwork and quilting; painted exquisitely and could cook and kept an enormous vegetable-garden and orchard, as well as chickens and bees—her knowledge of the "Muggle" world was enhanced due to her appreciation of the way they did everything by hand, and she knew about technology, owned a DVD-player (taken apart and enhanced by magic) and could drive a car. Illegally; one of her friends had taught her on his dad's farm, but she could still do it. "She was of the opinion that I could learn complex magic later in life."

"You taught yourself the basics enough that you would not be a danger to those around you," Professor Dumbledore nodded. "Very wise. However, as your aunt left you under my guardianship, I think it may be best to enrol you for the coming term at Hogwarts. Your Muggle education is at an end now, having sat the last of the examinations, yes?"

"Well, yes, unless I wanted to go to university," Maia said, thinking, "but I didn't apply; I'd like to study magic first. I can go to university any time." Professor Dumbledore nodded. "May I still come to Hogwarts?"

"Maia, your name has been down for enrolment at Hogwarts since the moment of your birth," Professor Dumbledore smiled kindly. "And, having been to visit the Scroll Room to see for myself, I believe I may have solved the problem of your living situation."

"My living situation?"

"I am not keen on the idea of you remaining alone, so soon after your great-aunt's death," Professor Dumbledore said. "I do not wish there to be any more incidents like that with your Muggle boyfriend William." Maia flushed deeply. Professor Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "I am sure not a year has gone by when girls at Hogwarts don't turn respective partners into animals of some sort. Howler-monkeys were on-trend this past term." Maia's lips twitched, and a low chuckle escaped her. Professor Dumbledore winked. "It seems I also solved the mystery of your lineage."

"My lineage? You mean my parents? My father," she added, eyes wide, and Professor Dumbledore nodded. "You… Did you know him?"

"I knew every member of your family," Professor Dumbledore said, and this time his eyes didn't twinkle; they shadowed with a sadness unbearable to see. All Maia had ever known of her mother's family was that some great tragedy had befallen them; her aunt, and Maia herself, were the last of them, and whatever the tragedy had been, it was so great that her great-aunt had never uttered a word of it. The only thing she knew of her father was that his name was Regulus. Regulus was the brightest star in the constellation _Leo_. Her great-aunt had told her that, according to her mother, in her father's family the names of stars and constellations had been used for generations to name their children: Maia was one of the Pleiades, and it was from this connection that her childhood nickname, Baby Star, had emerged. "And it is my greatest pleasure to inform you that your great-aunt was _not_ your last remaining living relative." Maia glanced up over the rim of her teacup, eyes wide.

"But my great-aunt said my father had died. That's what my mother had told her," she said, staring.

"Oh, I am afraid, my dear, that your father is indeed dead," Professor Dumbledore said solemnly. "However, his brother is _not_."

"His brother," Maia whispered to herself, stunned. Her father had had a brother. She knew her mother had had one brother, before the tragedy. Maia had an _uncle_. A real, live uncle. She fidgeted in her seat, and glanced up at Professor Dumbledore, who was watching her for her reaction. "How is it that… Why did my aunt never tell me?"

"I believe your great-aunt never told you, my dear, because she had no idea," Professor Dumbledore said sadly. "Your great-aunt was what is known to our world as a 'squib', born to a wizarding family with no magical abilities whatsoever. And she would not have known to whom the name Regulus referred, therefore she would not have made the connection with his brother."

"What about… Did my uncle never know about me?" she asked. Professor Dumbledore frowned thoughtfully.

"As to that, I am unsure," he said. "Certainly your uncle may have once or twice visited, perhaps when your mother was still alive. But when I spoke to him about it, Sirius had no idea of his having a niece." Professor Dumbledore's eyes twinkled now as he rested them on Maia's face. "A very well-kept secret." Maia fiddled with the delicate handle of her very fine teacup—she had served the tea with the best service, the one her aunt always used for the best company—and licked her lips, fidgeting again, her mind whirring.

"What's he like?" she asked. "My uncle."

"Ah," Professor Dumbledore smiled. "Well, that is in part why I am here. I said I wished you not to live alone; as it is, I am afraid I cannot give you the time and attention that you deserve. There are a great many things that I need to attend to." Maia nodded; she knew this already, of course. "But having discussed your situation with your uncle, Sirius has expressed a desire to…well, to take care of you." Maia blinked, glancing at Professor Dumbledore.

"He does?"

"Sirius finds himself in possession of a large, empty house, and with the secretive nature of your upbringing—not least, your upbringing in the _Muggle_ world—Sirius is curious to know you," Professor Dumbledore said, eyes once again twinkling. "He does ask that I explain a few things to you, to allow you to weigh your response to him inviting you to live with him."

"What are they?" Maia asked curiously.

"Well, my dear, part of the reason you have no knowledge of your uncle," Professor Dumbledore said, "is because he has resided in the wizard prison Azkaban for twelve years. The wills of the deceased being available to those who know how to ask, I took the liberty of examining your mother's; if Sirius had not been incarcerated, guardianship of you would have passed to him at your mother's death." Maia stared. She had never known this. Her uncle had been in _jail_.

"Why was he in prison?" she asked.

"Ah. The crux of the matter," Professor Dumbledore sighed. "Sirius will, I think, if you ask him give you the long version of the story, but to simplify matters, Sirius was wrongly accused of the murder of thirteen people. Twelve Muggles and a wizard named Peter Pettigrew." Maia's eyes popped. "However, one year ago his innocence came to light—at least, to me. Since his escape from Azkaban two years ago, Sirius has been in hiding from the Ministry." Maia took this all in.

"If he's on the run, how can he invite me to live with him?" she asked.

"Sirius's—_your_—ancestral home is under such magical protection that only the keeper of the secret location may divulge its whereabouts," Professor Dumbledore said. "Therefore Sirius is utterly protected while he remains within its confines. Enemies, or Aurors from the Ministry, could press their noses against the drawing-room window and never find him. And this is why I, and not Sirius—for one of several reasons—have come to invite you to live with him. I am the secret-keeper, therefore if you wish to accept Sirius's invitation, I shall speak the whereabouts of his home, and deliver you safely there myself. Would you _like_ to come and stay with Sirius, until September the first?"

Maia stared at Professor Dumbledore. She had an _uncle_? He had been wrongly accused of mass-murder! And he wanted her to live with him because he didn't want her living on her own.

None of her friends, nor their parents, had asked whether Maia wanted to come and stay with any of them, even for just a little while. Her great-aunt had left her the cottage, and all the surrounding land, in her will, and her mother had left her the contents of a great old vault in the wizards' bank Gringott's… But did Maia want to live alone? _Especially_ if she could live with an uncle she had never known she had. What was he like?

Did she want to live with her mysterious new uncle?

A mysterious uncle wrongly accused of murder and imprisoned for twelve years and on the run from authorities for two. She imagined he must have led an incredibly lonely existence, and while she had friends at school, and pen-friends abroad, usually it was just Maia and her great-aunt. Now her aunt was gone. She understood lonely. And she had only been so for a week: she couldn't imagine how unbearable her uncle must find everything.

"I…I would like to meet my uncle," she said quietly, glancing hopefully at Professor Dumbledore.

"And he would dearly love to meet his brother's daughter," Professor Dumbledore smiled. "Especially one who has been raised in the Muggle world." He winked, his eyes twinkling, as if at some private joke. "Now then, now that's settled, why don't you start packing everything? I must try one of these scones! Did you make them?"

"I—I did," Maia stammered, wide-eyed, "er—Professor? I… Well, I didn't realise that I'd be…well, leaving _today_." She glanced around the parlour: if she was to leave today, she had a _lot_ of work to do. Just clearing and organising the kitchen and the vegetable-garden alone would take all day. And the _chickens_! Golly, Posh, Ida, Monica Joan and Pookie were her darlings, the sweet little fluffy-legged Bantams!

"I am afraid, my dear, that time is of the essence these days," Professor Dumbledore sighed. He shook his hand enigmatically. "And it had briefly slipped my mind you bear no wand. Have a seat; we shall finish this marvellous spread while the house packs itself up. I shall leave the garden; I imagine Sirius would appreciate the privacy of the meadows while you tend the allotments and those Bantams."

Dazed, Maia sat, as Professor Dumbledore pulled out his wand, giving it a few complicated little flicks, and before her eyes the house started to literally pack itself up: trinkets; photographs; furniture; cushions; dinner-services; the multitude of books Maia and her great-aunt had been collecting throughout her _very _long lifetime; portraits and the little pianoforte; her aunt's writing-desk in the library; the contents of cupboards and the footlockers and cabinets; she had presence of mind enough to set down her teacup and rush upstairs to check what was going on in her bedroom.

The walls of the cosy little room stacked floor-to-ceiling with books, another few tottering piles composed of DVD cases, with stacks upon stacks of records, the parts of the room where the walls _were_ visible were completely papered with exquisite watercolours and sketches, framed quilting samples and embroidery, record-sleeves, and a five-foot-wide corkboard framed with an ornate white-painted antique frame, completely plastered with letters; drawings; sketches; photographs; fabric swatches; magazine cut-outs; cinema and theatre ticket-stubs; concert and festival playlists; cards and postcards; notes and doodles. The pretty little desk, leather-topped and stained, worn and scarred, was cluttered with photographs; pots of knitting-needles; paint-brushes and makeup: the few shelves were stacked with recycled-leather journals in a rainbow of colours, neatly embossed with the letter _M_ in the lower-right-hand corner, held up by a Rolleicord camera and a miniature chess-set that had once belonged to her mother (the tiny, exquisitely-carved pieces halfway through a game with herself); sewing-boxes were piled high, surrounded by bolts of fabric, jars of buttons and beads, needles scattered around; a large flat-screen television, charmed to work off magic in conjunction with her enchanted DVD-player, sat in the corner: her record-player stood on the deep-set windowsill amid a little garden of flowers and herbs, the window open and a bee buzzing at a pale-blue violet: a dress-form stood, also surrounded by bolts of fabric, half-finished projects and mood-boards of inspiration for clothing propped against the wall of books, samples of embroidery and beadwork glittering in the sun as it splashed across the worn parquet floor, glinting off fallen needles and tiny seed-beads: on the dresser stood a selection of board-games, more records, more books, a pretty knitted bunny and a jar of lily-of-the-valley: a polished violin lay on the hand-embroidered feather cushion on the little rocking-chair in the corner of the room, by the exquisite doll-house replica of her family's ancestral home, a place Maia had never been due to the tragedy that had reduced her mother's family to two. A '50s red doll's pram contained her childhood toys; a fluffy chick with a powder-blue bow, gift from her family when she was born, an ancient teddy-bear, and an exquisite doll in likeness of herself, with a full, hand-sewn wardrobe.

There were photographs _everywhere_, evidence of her foreign holidays with Diane and her exotic friends, and trinkets she had brought back from their travels, like elegant ladies on their foreign _tours_ in olden times.

Professor Dumbledore chuckled at the expression on Maia's face as she realised he had followed her to the room, and could see it in such a state.

"Creative chaos," he chuckled. "It reminds me greatly of my own room when I was a teenager. So many _books_."

"I'm a bit of a glut," Maia winced guiltily.

"I think, a separate trunk for your personal possessions," Professor Dumbledore said, twiddling his wand again. "You shall want them closer at hand than the rest of your belongings, I think?" Maia grabbed her little brown-leather cross-shoulder handbag, with a lip-gloss and the little pound-sterling she had, and watched and ducked as everything in her room organised itself neatly into the trunk. Her jaw had dropped by the time Professor Dumbledore neatly closed the lid of the trunk with a soft click. She stared about the room.

For a moment she could see the tiny little room her miniature bed had been set in, when she was two years old and orphaned, clutching her doll and her little chick, crying for her mother to read her "_Bedtime for Baby Star_".

"I had forgotten the walls were _blue_," she said, surprised. She sighed. "We never usually packed very much when we travelled. We always came back with far too much." Usually books and trinkets, sometimes even furniture; a lot of cooking recipes and hands-on experience in the world.

"That explains your rather magnificent library," Professor Dumbledore chuckled. "I know few your age who possess a collection quite so large."

"Some of the books were my mother's," she said softly. "Most were kept in storage, in the big house." The "big house" was what her aunt had called their family's ancestral home, but, Maia and her mother had always lived in the 'Hobbit-hole' for privacy—then Diane had come to live in it with her, instead of moving into the Big House, full of the memories of people long lost.

Walking out of her home, it felt odd; it had never seemed so…_barren_, but it felt somehow…_light_. A great weight had lifted from seeing it so sparse, so…new. It felt as if it was ready for her to start filling with _her_ things, to put a full-stop at the end of her aunt's tenure as mistress and begin her own with a clean slate. Professor Dumbledore set up some very complicated protective enchantments on the property, including the meadows and woods, assuring her she could return whenever she wished, and offered her his arm. Glancing curiously at it, Maia tentatively latched onto Professor Dumbledore's proffered wrist.

"Now, I plan to Apparate with you to the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix," Professor Dumbledore said solemnly. "I seem to recall the sensation when first Apparating takes some getting used to, however, there is no need to be anxious." Maia nodded. "Then we shall depart. The location of the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix resides at number twelve, Grimmauld Place."

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review!


	2. Chapter 02

**A.N.**: This chapter is for _dustwalnut99_, and _Luc324_, as they were the first to add this story to their Alerts list.

Oh, and there will be some differences to canon, but I'll hopefully explain them well enough within the story!

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_02_

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><p>"You seem to be taking Apparition in your stride," Professor Dumbledore remarked, and Maia saw his expression was uncommonly shrewd.<p>

"That's not the first time I've done that," Maia admitted.

"You have Apparated before? With whom?"

"By myself," Maia said, and Professor Dumbledore's eyebrows twitched. "I started doing it when I was about thirteen. It was winter, and it had snowed heavily during school; when I got off the bus, the path was completely snowed over, so… I just kept walking, and wishing I was nearer home, it was all I could think about. And then I was home. I could see the Hobbit-hole, but I was all light-headed and felt like I'd been pushed through a tube."

"And you've been doing it ever since?"

"Never with anybody else but my aunt," Maia said, glancing at Professor Dumbledore. "Just…whenever I go and meet friends in town, or need to get something from the shop, or if I need to get home from a party, I'll go out of sight and do it. My friends all know I walk or cycle everywhere."

"We shall have to see about arranging for you to get your Apparition licence," Professor Dumbledore said.

"You need a licence to do that?" Maia asked curiously.

"Oh, yes," Professor Dumbledore nodded. Maia felt like how she imagined her joyriding friend had when his parents discovered he had been driving his dad's car without a licence or insurance. "There can be painful complications if Apparition isn't done correctly. Splinching is the most severe—leaving part of oneself at the original location."

"Ouch," Maia winced, thinking she rather liked her limbs attached to her body, and she glanced around. They had appeared in the middle of a small park of grass trimmed with older, rather gnarled trees and parched flowerbeds. On all sides, Maia could see Georgian townhouses, but some of them were evidently not as grand as they had formerly been in the days dainty ladies would call for tea in their gloves and bonnets, and the benches in the park were covered in graffiti, cigarette-burns and dried chewing-gum, litter tumbling at the bases of overflowing waste-bins.

Professor Dumbledore swept purposely toward one edge of the square, where the houses were perhaps most woeful-looking, dark brick with shabby trim at the windows, doors reinforced with multiple locks that looked far too new for the old buildings, stopping before the gate between houses number eleven and thirteen. Maia followed, and frowned when she had come up beside the professor. Where was house number twelve?

No sooner had she wondered than a battered door emerged out of nowhere between numbers eleven and thirteen, followed swiftly by faded brick walls and grubby black-trimmed windows. It was as though an extra house was inflating between numbers eleven and thirteen, without anybody noticing, pushing aside the ones in its way. Worn stone steps appeared before her, and Maia stared at the faded black paint on the door, where a silver doorknocker in the shape of an ouroboros was the only feature; there was no keyhole or letterbox. Professor Dumbledore drew his wand, tapping the door surreptitiously, before pocketing his wand again. Maia heard many loud, metallic clicks, and what sounded like the clatter of a chain; then the door creaked open.

"After you, my dear," Professor Dumbledore said politely. Maia stepped over the threshold tentatively, smelling damp, dust, and a sweetish, rotting smell she usually associated with decomposing vegetables. Eyes getting used to the meagre light after such dazzling sunshine outside, the thin panes of glass either side of the door shed dim light on a hall that seemed to be entirely panelled; the panelling continued up a staircase that wound up from the left, back, to a balconied gallery above, wrapping around to the right and over her head; far above, a once-elegant stained-glass dome shed meagre light over the upper storey galleries. Several doors led off this floor, and there were portraits hung in several of the larger panes of grubby wood; everything needed a very thorough clean; little patches of dust rose from the rug covering a floor that might have been handsome parquet. As Professor Dumbledore entered the hall and set about putting in place all the locks, Maia heard two voices, high above, and getting clearer, as if whoever owned them were coming downstairs.

"No stopping me this time, Moony," said the first voice, deep and slightly hoarse. "This is it. Don't make a move Moony, not one step." She heard footsteps on the stairs above. "I will not spend one more day—yet one more _hour_ in this cleft between Satan's buttocks my mother used to call 'home'."

Maia grinned to herself, amused at the description, and stepping eagerly to see who the voices belonged to; they were circling the upstairs galleries, and Maia couldn't see them.

"I have reached the end. My finger's on the trigger, so to speak. Don't try to stop me, Moony."

"Oh, not again," a second, softer voice said wearily.

"This is it. Don't try to stop me this time, Moony. Don't try to stop me this time, Moony. Don't you dare try to stop me this time, Moony, try to stop me," the tone of the first man's voice changed. Maia saw movement in the gallery directly above her; the first man sounded eccentric and angry. "Moony, get off your arse and _stop_ me! This is not a _joke_! _I'm committing suicide_!" A blast of red light from above made Maia jump; it ricocheted off a portrait against the wall at the top of the first landing. The first man sighed heavily. "Don't ever frighten me like that again. What have you become? Some kind of a sadist?"

"I'm sorry," the second man said, his voice torn between exasperation and amusement. "How do you feel now?"

"I want to die," the first man said sombrely, heaving a miserable sigh. "There's no adventure here."

"You call trying to curse yourself to smithereens no adventure?"

"Death is the only adventure I have left, Moony," the first voice said despondently. "I'm the reason my godson is orphaned; I've lost fourteen years of my life; I'm grounded in my mother's house; you're going off gallivanting with your terrifyingly nasty brethren having fun and _Kreacher_–is–_still_–_alive_!"

"Oh, come on," the second voice said, trying to inflict some enthusiasm into his voice. "We can play with your trains."

"Mum probably threw them out after I was naughty," the first man said petulantly. Maia heard footsteps again.

"Professor Dumbledore's bringing Maia today," the second man said coaxingly. Maia caught glimpses of patched and neatly-darned robes coming down the next flight of steps. "You know, you might want to, I don't know, comb your hair or hide the large stash of Muggle pornography you found in your old bedroom."

"Oh yeah!" the first man exclaimed brightly.

The man belonging to the second voice dropped onto the little landing, righting the portrait the other's spell had hit, before dropping down the last few steps into the hall. He froze and did a double-take when Maia waved nervously. For a moment Maia glimpsed long dark hair nearly the same shade of her own, before dark robes whipped back up the stairs out of sight, the man undoubtedly heading back upstairs for the pornography stash the second man had mentioned, and the second man reached back to yank at the hem of the robes.

The first man stumbled down several steps, crashing into the wall and upsetting the portrait again, tumbling with a choke to the other man's feet. "_Ow_! I escape Azkaban, spend two years on the run, survive an attempted suicide and now you're trying to strangle me?!" the first man fumed, righting his robes and sweeping a sheet of long hair out of his face. The other man frowned and nodded pointedly in Maia's direction. The dark-haired man glanced around, eyebrows raised curiously. "Oh. Fantastic way to make a first impression, Moony; try and murder someone right in front of her!"

"Is it two o'clock already?" the other man said, ignoring the other man's words as he checked an old pocket-watch, while the dark-haired man stared inscrutably at Maia.

"Good afternoon, Remus, Sirius," Professor Dumbledore said courteously, now finished locking the front-door.

"Professor Dumbledore," the tired-looking man said politely, nodding. He gave Maia a very warm smile, "And you must be Maia."

"Hi," Maia said quietly, waving awkwardly.

"Too late to comb my hair?" the long-haired man shot at the one with darned robes, and the latter smiled and shook his head, turning to Maia.

"You'll have to forgive Sirius," he said. "He wasn't caught young enough to tame." Maia laughed, and the second man, the paler one with the darned, neat robes, smiled, winking subtly at the first man's incredulous gape. Seemingly choosing to ignore the second man, the first asked Professor Dumbledore, "Did you have any trouble?"

"No, everything was fine," Professor Dumbledore smiled sanguinely. "Maia—this is Remus Lupin."

"It's lovely to meet you, Maia," Mr Lupin said. "Professor Dumbledore has told us a lot about you. Please, call me Remus."

"And this is your uncle, Sirius Black," Professor Dumbledore said, and the long-haired man shot her a quick, wolfish, very mischievous grin.

"Hello, Niecey," he chuckled, stormy silver eyes glowing even in the meagre light of the grimy, panelled hall. Striding forward, he smiled at her again before bringing her into a hug. Eyes widening with surprise, Maia tentatively hugged back: It was a while since Maia had been embraced like this. This was her _uncle_. Her _father_'s brother. He stood back, now cradling her face with surprising gentleness. As he took in every detail of her face, she observed him in kind, taking in their similarities, something she had never had the luxury of doing with her aunt, for all her mesmerising ancientness.

Given that she had had less than a half-hour to wrap her head around the idea of _having_ an uncle, she was surprised to discover that Sirius Black was not what she had expected. She didn't know exactly what she would have thought he would look like, but her mind hadn't gone past the _wrongly accused of mass-murder_ part of Professor Dumbledore's description of him. But they had the same shape of nose, neat and almost aristocratic, though the bridge of hers was dusted with the tiniest freckles, the rest of her complexion clear, and her hair was a slightly lighter shade of treacle, liberally streaked with natural gold and copper highlights from tending the garden in the blistering sunshine. They even had the same exquisite high cheekbones, though Sirius looked like he needed a few very good, large meals. She took after her father's side of her family, then.

Her father was a concept, rather than a reality: she knew he had once existed; _she_ would not exist if he had not, but she had never known him, knew nothing about him beyond his name, and had never even seen a picture of him. He existed as a foreign entity whose relatives were named after the stars, an oddly romantic tradition for a family who lived in this…house. She didn't know what it was, but something about the house made the fine hairs at the back of her neck prickle, a contrast to the impression she got from Sirius.

"You look a bit like him!" he exclaimed, with a sigh, shaking his head. A smile quirked at the corners of his lips. His gaze lingered on her eyes, her strange, weird eyes for a moment. "More like me, actually. Far prettier, than Regulus. He wasn't much of a looker… Maia. The last of the Blacks."

"Are you staying, Professor Dumbledore?" Remus asked.

"I'm afraid not," Professor Dumbledore said. "Maia, you will be needing…these." He twiddled his wand, and the two trunks—the first containing the contents of her bedroom, the other containing the contents of the rest of the Hobbit-hole—appeared out of nowhere, resting neatly on the grubby rug. "Remus, if you will permit me a quick word?" And he moved to the first doorway on the right leading off of the main hall; Maia glimpsed grubby olive walls half-panelled with bookcases that might once have been handsome, but in that brief glimpse she saw the books lined up were age-blackened and probably moulded. The door closing behind Remus, Sirius's features settled into an expression of remarkable disgruntlement, and he scowled at the peeling paint on the door, before sighing, and unfolding the arms he had crossed at Professor Dumbledore's request to speak to Remus.

His hands in the pockets of his robes as he glanced from the door to Maia, his expression turned from glum to curious, eyes flicking over her face again.

"Come on, downstairs; we'll have a drink to celebrate," he said, with an ironic little tug to the corners of his actually very lovely lips. Built almost invisibly into the panelling under the stairs, Sirius opened a door and pointed down a glowing staircase that led to what he murmured was the kitchen, and at the foot of a flight of worn stone steps, they entered the kitchen.

Maia was instantly reminded of home: the kitchen was a relatively low-ceilinged, half-panelled, half-tiled hall in the basement, the walls rounded like tunnels, with a small network of open pantries and larders leading off it, each filled with open cabinet shelves; there was a large half-moon window over the enormous white porcelain sink that shed blistering sunlight across the scrubbed wooden floor and the golden-oatmeal tiling halfway up the walls; several polished doors led off the main room, which was dominated by a very large range at one end, and a huge natural-oak table that had, at least, been scrubbed clean; benches and carved, polished mismatched chairs stood about the table, and pots and pans of copper hung from the ceiling and on the walls.

"What the—" Sirius blurted, and as Maia dropped into the kitchen beside him, she canted her head to one side, bemused. The bowl in which a batch of dough had been leavening in her kitchen now rested on the table, with just about every vase, mason-jar and Moroccan tea-glass she had filled with wildflowers from her walks and cut flowers from the garden: vibrant sunflowers; cornflowers, dahlias, chocolate cosmos, vivid snapdragons, peonies, ranunculus, freesias, lilac sprays and more. They were all neatly lined up and ready to be dispersed throughout the house. _It did seem a shame to waste them_, Maia thought, smiling subtly.

"Where did all this food come from?" Sirius blurted, perplexed. Following his gaze, Maia glanced into the series of little pantries opposite, which were mostly tiled, the floors recently scrubbed: the hand-carved shelves had been _stuffed_ with jars of jam; pickled onions; broths, cooked chopped tomatoes and even the six-pack of _Diet_ _Cokes_ Maia had bought yesterday: handmade loaves of artisan bread Maia had kneaded and shaped herself were piled and stacked and tucked neatly: polished, sturdy half-bushels overflowed with tomatoes of every shape and size, ranging from deep red, to brightly-coloured orangey-yellow ones, fat purple ones like fat black marbles and green ones; there were hundreds of fat pea-pods; runner-beans; broad-beans; carrots of all colours; chard; glossy aubergines, a _lot_ of courgette; butternut squash; frilly lettuces of green, purple and red; fennel bulbs; bell-peppers of every colour; perfect cabbages; the sprouting tips of purple broccoli; a cluster of fat watermelons; a trug of fresh asparagus, white from her underground crop, green from the normal one; there were baskets heaped with redcurrants; raspberries; pink-currants; blackberries; blackcurrants; gooseberries; too many strawberries to count; and bushels of plums; pears; apples; peaches; cherries by the tonne; a series of terracotta pots contained part of Maia's not-inconsiderable herb-garden; several neat bushels were sealed, filled with different kinds of flour and several kinds of sugar, and a neatly-sealed jar on one of the shelves was labelled 'Yeast'. More sealed, labelled jars contained flavoured sugar Maia had prepared herself—star-anise, vanilla pods, lavender, cinnamon sticks, lemon, rose and almond—and even more jars of spices, baking powder, dried and ground herbs and nuts, star anise, ginger, nutmeg, dried and fresh chillies and peppers, jars of solid chocolate, cocoa nibs, chips and decadent cocoa and drinking-chocolate, tins of syrup, treacle, malt, selections of nuts, were neatly arranged on several shelves in one of the pantries, with bundles of herbs in varying degrees of drying out, tied with blue-twisted string Maia recognised, hanging from the ceiling, as they had been in _her_ pantry. The door to the wine-cellar open, Maia saw three large polished barrels, two made of oak and a larger one of chestnut, which were filled with her own home-pressed apple-cider; there was a large stock of bottles of beer, and quite a few bottles of other liquors, including the _kirschwasser_ and the cherry liqueur she was fond of making with her cherry-orchard. There were also labelled tins full of loose-leaf tea, collected from their travels, and old cake- and sweet-tins full of cakes and patisserie Maia had baked.

"I…I think Professor Dumbledore brought it, from my house," Maia said, blushing slightly.

"All these vegetables?"

"He must stripped the garden of the vegetables that have grown already," Maia said, as Sirius poked his nose curiously in some of the polished half-bushels, overflowing with freshly-picked chillies; beetroots; enormous garlic bulbs; red and white onions; baby onions; shallots; a burlap sack of still-muddy new potatoes; sticks of rhubarb; and cucumbers.

"_You_ grew all of this?" Sirius asked, his eyes wide, looking impressed.

"My aunt raised me to be self-sufficient," Maia answered. "I enjoy gardening. It's ridiculously fulfilling." Sirius chuckled.

"I should have pretended to be a loveable stray near _your_ house," he muttered to himself, casting her a glance before grabbing a vine of ripe cherry-tomatoes.

Aside from self-sufficiency in growing their own fruit and vegetables, Maia's aunt had raised her to bake her own bread by hand; to make her own jams; tend the bees; the chickens; jar piccalilli, pickled-onions and chutneys in every combination of flavours she could dream up; making stocks from scratch. If she wasn't inside, reading, sewing, knitting, practicing her instruments or listening to music, Maia was outside, tending the huge vegetable-garden, examining the beehives, egg-hunting, or going out picking wild blackberries and gooseberries and elderflowers, cycling to the beach for fresh muscles, or fishing the streams for trout. She was also very good at making cordials and, her especial talents, pressing her own cloudy, delicious apple cider and making cherry liqueur, leaving the stones in the cherries to give it a delicious almond flavour. One small glass of cider and her friends were knocked down on their arses: the _kirshwasser_ was reserved for sprinkling on Black Forest gateau, as well as the cherry liqueur. The only thing she couldn't do was make cheese, as a cow or goat would fall upon her to care for, and she didn't know how, but Maia kept chickens, and a shallow, handmade dish, beautifully painted and glazed inside, featured the spoils of her egg-hunting.

"What's this?" Sirius asked, having found the dozens of labelled bottles of cordial, and the slenderer ones of clear kirschwasser, decadent cherry liqueur, and clear plum brandy.

"It's cordial," Maia said. "There's lemon; strawberry; rhubarb; raspberry; plum; peach and elderflower. And those dark bottles are cherryliqueur. The clear ones are plum brandy and kirschwasser. Professor Dumbledore brought the cider barrels, too." Sirius turned adoring eyes on her.

"You make your own liqueur and brandy? And _cider_?" he asked, sounding a little breathless.

"My aunt taught me," Maia said humbly. "And her parents taught her. I have all the family recipes going back…generations. Back to a French ancestor who married an English wizard, from about the mid-1700s. The kirsch process comes from a friend in the Black Forest, and I learned how to make brandy in Romania, but the cider our family learned to make over the last two centuries here."

"What are all these?" Sirius asked, frowning at the wicker-basket on the counter by the sink. "Muscles?"

"I collected them earlier when I went for a bike-ride, before Professor Dumbledore came to the house," Maia said. "I was going to make _moules marinières_ for dinner; I didn't realise I'd be coming here."

"Do you live near the sea, then, if you can collect these so easily?" Sirius asked, frowning at the vast quantity of fat muscles.

"The beach is about five miles away from our Hobbit-hole," Maia said. "I've never really measured the exact distance." Sirius's eyes had flashed at the phrase 'Hobbit-hole', for some reason, and a teasing smile glittered in his enigmatic grey eyes.

"I used to love the seaside," he said glumly, his face falling as he turned over several fat, closed muscles. He glanced up at her, and a smile returned. "Is your cider for special occasions?"

"I don't need a special-occasion to drink something nice," Maia smiled. "That's very old-fashioned thinking." Sirius chuckled, grabbing two little silver-braced glasses, and Maia retrieved the pitcher she had decanted cider into only last night, pouring two portions. "You don't need much of it, or you'll be legless."

"Excellent!" Sirius grinned. "Come, sit. Chat." He drew a chair from the table, flinging himself down, and slapped the seat of a second chair he drew out for her. Maia sat, just inside the reach of the sunshine creeping into the room from the window over the sink.

"Well, I'd say 'have a look around the place', but it's a shithole," he said, gesturing around. "We're lucky Molly went berserk at the sight of the kitchen and attacked it. But the rest of the house is a sorry example for your first experience in a wizarding home. They're not usually this grim."

"Why is this one so…?" Maia said, unable to think up a delicate but poignant word to describe the house.

"No one's lived here for ten years, not since my _dear_ mother died," Sirius said, sighing heavily. "Unless you count her old house-elf, and he's gone round the twist—hasn't cleaned anything in ages."

"What's a house-elf?" Maia asked curiously, and Sirius turned a sharp glance on her from the corner of his eye, a tiny smile teasing at the corners of his lips.

"Dumbledore warned me how little you know about our world," Sirius said, folding his arms across his chest. He flashed her another of his wolfish grins. "I'm _so_ glad it's true! House-elves are servants; they come with big old manors, ancient magical families with a lot of money. House-elves are usually enslaved to one family forever."

"That's horrible!" Maia exclaimed, eyes widening, lowering her glass. Sirius flicked his eyes over her face, an enigmatic smile playing at his lips. "You have a house-elf?"

"My mother did," Sirius said, and the way he said it implied there was a _very_ big difference. She still frowned. "I haven't called this place home for years—I ran away when I was sixteen."

"Why?" Maia asked curiously.

"I _hated_ it," Sirius said, looking around the kitchen dispassionately, though his eyes seemed to twinkle at the sight of the glossy vegetables and the many loaves of fresh artisan bread. "I hated everything this house stood for." He lifted his glass, sipping his cider, and Maia waited for his reaction. His eyes widened, and he started in his seat.

"Oh _Merlin_ this is delicious!" he gasped, gazing at his glass with something just short of the look a father would give his newborn firstborn. "You made this?" Maia nodded, and Sirius sipped again, practically melting into a puddle as he relaxed into his chair, his eyes sliding closed, savouring the taste.

"Sirius…why did you come back here, if you hate it so much?" Maia asked tentatively.

"It's ideal for Headquarters," Sirius sighed, eyes opening again. "My father was paranoid; he put every kind of Muggle-repelling and protection enchantment on the property he could."

"It makes a good hiding-place, then," Maia said, and as she glanced at the man, his features clouded a little. "Professor Dumbledore says you're on the run from the Ministry of Magic."

"What did he tell you about me?" Sirius asked.

"Not very much," Maia admitted. "Just that you were wrongly accused of murdering—a lot of people." He sighed, his expression very glum. "There's more to the story, though, isn't there?"

"There's always more to a story," Sirius smiled tiredly, not answering the question. Maia nodded. "So…you went to a Muggle school instead of Hogwarts?"

"Yeah." Sirius nodded, arms still crossed over his front. Long dark hair, and features that would have been extremely handsome had he not been far too thin, and he looked…sad.

"And you watch Muggle television and listen to Muggle music?" he prompted curiously. Maia nodded, the mention of music boosting her confidence; she wasn't usually this shy, or quiet. In fact, she was known as the "tigress" at school, because whenever something needed doing, she got it done. Everybody thought she wasn't afraid of anything. She glanced at Sirius.

"My home doesn't have electricity, so I've had to…improvise," she said, blushing a little as Sirius's expression changed, shrewd and oddly… It reminded her of a dog that had spotted its prey, still and thrilled with anticipation. "And I love reading, so I have a huge collection of books, and I have a lot of records. Some of them were my mother's; she liked…Professor Dumbledore would call it 'Muggle' music."

"What kind of music do you like?" Sirius asked, smiling now.

"All different kinds," Maia smiled back. "It depends on my mood. I can listen to country and rock and classical and pop, and opera and jazz, all in one day. Last year, my friend's parents invited me to go with their family to this vintage festival at Twinwood—there were live bands, I didn't stop dancing the entire weekend, barely slept. And my friend's brother is in a band, so we used to sneak into the club on Rock Night to see them play." Sirius chuckled softly.

"If I tell you the names of the Muggle bands _I_ liked when I was your age, will you know them?" Sirius asked.

"Try me."

"Okay… AC/DC; Aerosmith; Small Faces; Iggy Pop; The Cure; Velvet Underground and the Dead Kennedys; The Beatles; Led Zeppelin; Social Distortion," Sirius said, looking thoughtful. "And _KISS_."

At the same moment, Maia and Sirius both stuck out their tongues. "Gene!" Sirius gave a bark-like laugh, his entire face changing under the influence of his grin; he looked far younger, and much handsomer. It was the long hair, Maia thought; and his _thinness_. He needed fattening up. "Oh, and Aretha; John Lee Hooker; Jimi Hendrix; Skeeter Davis; and Michael Jackson. Floyd."

"Floyd's very cool," Maia agreed, smiling. She was of the opinion that she was who she was because of the people she had known, and most of her musical influences had come from her friends at school; but this proved she had gained a little, at least, from her father's family besides her weird eyes and dark hair.

"So what do you mean by a 'vintage' festival?" Sirius asked, and Maia told him about the Twinwood festival, with all the ladies in their vintage finest, the full bandstands, the musicians and dancing, the shops and the Tanqueray bar, the kinds of music they played, the women who walked around with trays of lipstick, giving you free touch-ups, teaching you how to do your hair in victory-rolls, the vintage cars and music bars.

"Did you bring any of your records?" Sirius asked.

"Professor Dumbledore packed up my whole house," Maia nodded. "Except for my chickens." Sirius's eyes sparked again.

"Excellent!" he grinned. "I must admit, you're not what I expected. I wouldn't have thought you'd listen to rock and punk."

"I like classic rock, Sixties stuff, like The Kinks and the Rolling Stones, and I like early punk—but I also like Fifties stuff, like _The Champs_, Dino… I _love_…I mean_ love_ Elvis. But if I'm going out, I only like going to rock night at the local clubs."

"How old are you?" Sirius asked.

"I'll be sixteen in August," Maia said, and Sirius quirked an eyebrow.

"From what I recall, Muggle clubs require identification," he said.

"I never get carded," Maia said, sighing. "My friends are older, and I'm tall; they assume I'm older." Sirius nodded.

"And you're very pretty," Sirius said. "That always goes a long way with getting past the bouncers."

"And getting drinks," Maia smiled. "Especially if the lesbian behind the bar loves your cleavage." Sirius barked another laugh, this one extending to his pale eyes, warming his entire face and making him look less skeletal. "Sirius…?" Maia said tentatively, and he nodded, smiling softly. "When you said Headquarters earlier…what did you mean? Professor Dumbledore mentioned something called the Order of the Phoenix."

"That's a very long story," Sirius sighed heavily. "With you not knowing what you should, it'll take a while to explain…"

"Try me," Maia shrugged. Sirius glanced at her from the corner of his pale eyes.

As he had warned, the story was complex, and Sirius's voice went a little hoarse before the end, due to having not used it for years, he explained, while in Azkaban: Maia pieced together that a Dark wizard, the most feared evil wizard in the entire world, for many, many years, had been defeated by a baby boy, named Harry, who was Sirius's godson. From what Sirius had learned later from Harry himself, who was younger than Maia by nearly a year, turning fifteen just before she would reach her sixteenth birthday later this summer, and from Professor Dumbledore, Harry was a bit of an adventurer, with a sort of compulsive need to save people. He seemed like quite a character, and Sirius spoke about him with obvious affection. To have escaped from an inescapable prison to protect him, Maia thought Sirius must love his godson very much, even if they'd never met since Harry was a baby.

Sirius told her that Harry had faced this Lord Voldemort character once again when he was eleven years old, and defeated him, and then again, when he was twelve; though Lord Voldemort had attacked in the guise of a memory of his sixteen-year-old self preserved in a diary, which had latched onto a young girl named Ginny, draining her life away while he grew stronger. This fascinated Maia, how something inanimate could leech the strength of a person's soul, and was glad that Harry had saved the girl's life. Harry's third year at Hogwarts, Sirius had escaped from Azkaban, attempting to get to the disguised man who had truly betrayed Harry's parents to their deaths. An instant connection sprang within Maia for this Harry boy: they had both lost their parents as infants, though Maia honestly couldn't say how her parents had died.

"The man…he got away?" Maia asked, gazing at Sirius with wide eyes, disbelieving. Everything Sirius had gone through—he had told her the story dispassionately, baldly, without embellishment or self-pity, but anger and resentment—and the traitor had escaped?!

"So now I have a ten-thousand galleon price on my head," Sirius sighed, though his lips twitched subtly as if in faint amusement. He must try and find amusement where he could, Maia thought.

"What are galleons?" she asked. She vaguely knew the term from some obscure lecture on Spanish history: it might have had something to do with the Armada and treasure-ships from South America.

"Wizards' currency," Sirius smiled. "There are gold galleons, silver sickles and bronze knuts." And he briefly explained how the currency was divided. Luckily, Maia was a brilliant student and could do extremely complicated equations in her head, and she wondered what the exchange rate from "Queen's money", as Sirius called it, to Wizard galleons was.

"So…what's happened to the man, Pettigrew, since?" Maia asked curiously. "How has nobody else figured out you're innocent?"

"Without Pettigrew, there's no evidence that I'm not guilty," Sirius said darkly. "I've been on the run since, but Pettigrew… He scurried straight back to his master…" Maia knew he meant Lord Voldemort, who sounded to her like a sort of Sauron of the wizarding world, disembodied but malicious, still casting terror wherever his name was brought up. Sirius told her about what had happened in the previous year, that, aided by Pettigrew and a "Death Eater" named Bartemius Crouch junior, Lord Voldemort had hatched a plan to capture Harry Potter, use his blood for regeneration, and finally kill him as he had tried when Harry was but a baby.

Sirius had been on edge all year, anticipating something dreadful would happen; Harry's name coming out of a Goblet of Fire had been yet another in a string of strange occurrences that had begun to feel, to Sirius at least, like it had felt during the first War.

"Just so you know why we're all stuck here…" And he told Maia about what had happened during the Third Task: Harry should have reached the enchanted Triwizard Cup alone, transported to a secluded cemetery, and promptly slaughtered. But the first, true Hogwarts Champion—only one student was selected from each magical school to compete, Sirius explained—Cedric Diggory, had taken joint first place with Harry at his urging; they had reached the cemetery, where Harry had blocked a Killing Curse meant for Cedric. Apparently, Cedric had grabbed Harry, and the Triwizard Cup—Sirius explained it had been enchanted into a Portkey, a magical item that transported a group of people to a pre-designated destination—at the same moment a dirty great serpent had attacked. They had reappeared at the edge of the maze, the snake attacking Cedric, Harry waking up, having survived a Killing Curse for the second time—twice more than any other person in history had ever survived it. Professor Dumbledore had killed the snake, and discovered the true identity of the man masquerading as Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody, listening to his testimony under the influence of a potion called Veritaserum, the strongest truth potion in the world.

Maia stared at Sirius, slowly lowering her glass. Harry had survived, for the second time, a curse no other witch or wizard in _history_ had ever survived?! He had stepped in front of it, mindlessly sacrificing his own life to protect a boy he barely knew?

Churning all this over, Maia wondered how any kid could handle the kinds of things Harry Potter seemed to be put through on a regular basis, and she frowned. "Sirius…?"

"Mm?" Sirius slowly licked his lips of cider, eyes soft as he gazed into his glass.

"Why did nobody think to use Veritaserum on you—I mean, during your court-case, they must have asked for your testimony?" she asked, frowning. She hadn't taken Law at school, but one of her friends had. Sirius gave her a very dark smile.

"I was never given a trial," he said, and Maia's eyes popped.

"They—they threw you into jail without giving you a trial?" she gasped, mortified. "But—but you were facing multiple murder charges, they couldn't do that!"

"Well, a street full of witnesses—Muggles—thought they'd seen Pettigrew corner me, shouting that I'd betrayed Lily and James," Sirius said, his cheekbones popping as his features seemed to sharpen with suppressed rage. "He blew up the street with a wand behind his back." Maia was still wrapping her head around the concept of wizards being able to turn into animals at will, a process called Animagi.

"But… But—!" Maia couldn't comprehend—no trial, and for a charge of thirteen counts of murder, that was—she couldn't even find the right word to describe the level of atrocity that reached. "But—you were innocent. They could have used Veritaserum, that would have proved instantly you were no spy!" Her back straightened, a simmering anger soothing her shock. "You spent twelve years in jail because they didn't give you a trial? You could nail that entire Ministry to the wall."

"I'm still hopeful I'll have the chance to," Sirius said, and he gave her another of his wolfish, roguish grins.

"So…so you said that after the Third Task, Professor Dumbledore asked you to recall the Order of the Phoenix," Maia said. "That's what you've been doing for the last week? And securing this house?"

"Yep," Sirius said.

"So what does the Order _do_, exactly?"

"Well, during the War, we fought the Death Eaters, tried to do everything we could to stop Voldemort's reign of terror spreading," Sirius said. "But it was futile, almost. The Death Eaters outnumbered us twenty to one, and kept picking us off one by one. Now, though, we've reinstated during peacetime, which has made it easier to recruit new members, and we've got quite a few high-profile wizards on our side."

"What do you do?"

"We're doing everything we can to stop Voldemort gaining any sort of foothold, before he tries to regain power again," Sirius said. "Since his plan failed, he's had to flee again. We know what he attempted; Harry made sure Dumbledore knew as soon as it happened. Dumbledore's pretty shrewd about what Voldemort might have planned once he regained his powers, so we're doing everything we can to make it impossible to do so, should he ever return." Maia nodded.

"What types of things are you trying to do?" Maia asked curiously. "Other than destroying his _precious_?" How did one prevent a Dark wizard rising again? Sirius gave her a charismatic smile.

"I can't tell you everything," he said, "not what the Order's doing at least, but some of the things we've orchestrated through the Ministry have been in the papers, so I can tell you those."

"I haven't read anything in the newspapers," Maia frowned. Sirius smiled again.

"The wizard newspaper," he amended, then frowned curiously at her. "You _read_ Muggle newspapers?"

"I like doing the crosswords," Maia shrugged. She loved _words_. "So—so what is the Order doing?"

"Well, the Ministry has sent envoys to the giants in Europe," Sirius said, and Maia stared at him. Knowing that there were actually such things as dragons and unicorns was one thing—giants were real too? And goblins ran the wizard bank, Gringott's. "Plus, we've got a werewolf representative liaising with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures for a change in their status." _Werewolves, too_! An odd shiver passed over Sirius's face. "And we're trying to manoeuvre control of Azkaban from the Dementors." What little Sirius had told her about Dementors was a little too much, and though she couldn't truly appreciate the strength of Sirius's aversion to them after having every happy thought and memory drained from him for twelve years, she could understand enough about them to suppress a shiver at the thought of them.

"And this is Headquarters? Why does it have to be a secret location?" Maia asked curiously.

"Well, because strictly speaking, the Order is a secret society," Sirius said. "We don't want outside influences interfering."

"You mean you don't want people at the Ministry knowing about it," Maia noted succinctly, and Sirius gave a nod.

"We do have quite a few members _inside_ the Ministry, though," he said. "Having Amos Diggory's been a real help—he's Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

"Diggory. Cedric Diggory's father?" Maia asked, and Sirius nodded. "Did he join because Voldemort almost killed his son?"

"Yes," Sirius nodded solemnly. "And I'd like to think his attitude toward some of our magical brethren has changed dramatically since Cedric told him his favourite and best teacher at Hogwarts was Remus."

"Why does that matter?" Maia asked curiously.

"Well—"

"There you two are!" Remus smiled, appearing at the foot of the worn stone stairs, smiling, but there were faint lines of strain at the corners of his pale, tired eyes. "Haven't you shown Maia around the house yet?"

"I'm attempting to prevent too much exposure, actually," Sirius said, sighing. He glanced at Maia. "But I probably should show you around the house, just to point out things you're not supposed to touch." Maia finished the last of her cider, and followed Sirius up the stairs; Remus remained in the kitchen with a pot of tea and a lot of paperwork.

Pressing his fingers to his lips as they passed a pair of moth-eaten curtains on the wall between the door to the cloakroom perpendicular to the staircase downstairs to the kitchen, the curtains looked head-on to the front-door, past the foot of the winding galleried staircase; the second door off the hall led into a dining-room that must once have been very handsome, with long velvet-brocade curtains and panelled walls, and a huge oval table of dark wood beautifully inlaid with gold and cherry grains. Each sinuously-carved chair was upholstered in dark emerald silk, but most had been gnawed at and nested in by something or other, and Maia distinctly heard a buzzing coming from the curtains over the windows.

Leaving the dining-room behind, Maia followed Sirius up the staircase, which needed a good stiff brush and a polish, and stopped on the halfway landing. Below the portrait Sirius's earlier curse had nearly knocked off the wall there was a row of what looked like shrunken heads mounted on plaques.

"Er…" The heads all had the same rather snout-like nose. "What…what are these?"

"Our dear Aunt Elladora started the tradition of beheading our house-elves when they got too old to carry a tea-tray," Sirius said, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wall, frowning as he regarded the heads. "We've only just managed to secure this place for Headquarters, so we haven't begun decontaminating it yet. But we'll make it fit to live in. Until then, best only use the bathroom in this floor; Remus and Molly attacked it first thing."

Like the hall downstairs, the gallery was panelled, and each of the sinuous columned archways featured a hanging lamp of dusty glass that might have been green; toward the front of the house, the panelling gave way mostly to cupboards and bathrooms, huge windows in dire need of a scrub and wash, while the gallery wrapped around itself, the stairs built one on top of the other so most of the larger rooms were on the right-side of the house and at the back, which went back further than Maia had expected. Age-blackened portraits hung on the panelling, and Sirius told her one of the first things they would be doing was ripping them all down from the peeling, grubby wallpaper.

It was a dismal house, dark and decaying. She felt like Belle walking around Beast's castle in the Disney film. She said to Sirius, "It reminds me of Miss Havisham's house… Or maybe the setting for one of those horror-films where the teenagers go in, and you see the bloody fingernail scratches on the metal doors, and there are hidden rooms with vats filled with acid, and blood seeps through the wallpaper, and they find body-parts under the floorboards."

"What kind of films do _you_ watch?" Sirius asked, turning wide eyes on her. Maia shrugged.

"I had a boyfriend who liked to try and terrify me into hiding under the covers," she said, and Sirius chuffed a soft laugh.

"Well, I don't know about vats of acid," Sirius sighed, "but I'm sure Kreacher has a cupboard filled with poisons he's just _dying_ to test out on me." Maia glanced at Sirius, but he was walking a little ahead of her and she couldn't tell whether he was joking or not.

It was strange, being showed around this dark, dismal house: Sirius showed absolutely no love for it, and asked her about her home with a wistful expression when she talked of walking to gather muscles, and the vegetable-patch, and walking to and from the bus-stop a mile from her house every day, going home via the local butcher's, and her delight that an older friend had just received their driver's licence, and they had started going to the rock club in town. Maia couldn't really think of much to ask Sirius. She had found out not less than an hour ago that she actually had an uncle, yet she had no questions yet.

Sirius showed her through the house, into the once-beautiful drawing-room, a room she stepped into and turned in a circle, taking everything in; it had a soaring Maplewood mezzanine balcony, little cosy-corners and a corner-cabinet filled with treasures; the whole room was marred only by a grubby tapestry, and two glass-fronted cabinets filled with eerie and spine-tingling things like bloody daggers and snake-skins: Sirius ducked as he passed a grandfather clock on another floor, which promptly spit out a rather large and heavy bolt at the opposing wall; warned her not to open the wardrobes in some rooms; not to touch any of the powders or cosmetics on the dressing-tables in others; told her to use only the one bathroom he and Remus had already cleaned on the first floor; and showed her some of the spare bedrooms.

While they toured the house, Maia remarking that it must have been quite beautiful when Sirius was growing up here, and that all it needed was a good hard scrub and a lick of paint, Sirius asked her things. It seemed like he liked listening to her life more than he wanted her to ask about his. Realising he had been on the run for the last two years, and in prison before that, Maia didn't blame him, but he didn't give much away, except about Harry. So she let him ask her about her life, and answered his questions as well as she could.

Sirius led her to upper storeys where bedroom-doors were marked with little silver plaques, and coming back downstairs again they stumbled on a huge area designated as an open playroom, which had once been the bright colours of a bouquet of daffodils, bright spring green and happy yellow, but the paint had faded. Maia was sure it was a trick of the light, but she could have sworn the animals in the hand-painted border moved.

The playroom had been left a shrine to Sirius and Regulus' childhood—Regulus' more than his own, Sirius said; he had been disdained and disowned by his mother. There was a colourful tepee and two miniature canoes; a guard-tower; a large model ship with lifelike miniature pirate-dolls; a large collection of clockwork trains and a glass-fronted cabinet filled with wizard board-games, and it seemed that the playroom had been abandoned in the middle of a game of jacks; marbles were scattered across the woven carpet, which had been gnawed at in places; tin soldiers had been neatly set in formation before being obliterated by a toy drum. In one corner of the room, model dragons formed a mobile, glittering with tiny droplets of glass that twinkled and glimmered like stars, and silver-winged golden balls that fluttered idly.

Sirius looked about the playroom sadly, using his wand to clean the dust off photographs on the furnace mantelpiece by which a nice rocking-chair stood, and Maia peered curiously at the paintings pinned up on the walls in the corner under a round table set into a raised platform guarded by balustrades and a few steps.

"Our little schoolroom," Sirius said, leaning against one banister and looking about despondently. "When we were children, our Christmas tree used to be set up here. Regulus and I would bring out little folding camp-beds and sleep by the tree, watching the fairies glitter…"

"Earlier," Sirius said, as he showed her his father's old study, "you mentioned Miss Havisham. That's a lady from a Muggle novel, isn't it?"

"_Great_ _Expectations_," Maia nodded, and Sirius made a scoffing, amused noise, his expression ironic.

"I think I read that," he said thoughtfully. "I went into a Muggle bookshop when I was thirteen and devoured the Classics section. What happens in it again?"

"You can borrow my copy, if you like," Maia said. "Reread it."

"I just might," Sirius said, heaving a sigh. "Won't have anything else to do but read, stuck in this house."

"You could always clean," Maia suggested lightly, and Sirius shot her a wolfish grin. She couldn't help shuddering at the level of dirtiness in this house; it made her come over feeling like she had hives.

"Are you alright?" Sirius asked, smirking a little.

"It's so _unclean_!" Maia blurted, her hands shaking as she clapped them to her cheeks, eyes wide as she took in the grime creeping up the skirting-boards, the puffs of dust that wafted everywhere they stepped.

"Well, Niecey, you are more than welcome to get a jumpstart on the cleaning," Sirius said, shooting her a sly grin. "I'll give you a bucket and a pair of dragon-hide gloves, and you can scrub to your heart's content." Maia chuckled softly, glancing at her uncle.

"I think I'd do best to rip up all these old carpets," she said, toeing the rug beneath their feet as they crept down a dank corridor that must once have been beautiful because the half-panelling was still intact. "They'll give someone an asthmatic attack."

"Hm," Sirius said, fumbling in the folds of his robes, and he pulled out a wand, twiddling it; two pairs of gloves appeared, made of a shiny material akin to alligator. "We'll get started now, shall we?" Sirius wasn't joking: they went back to the far end of the corridor, and tugged; with very little effort whatsoever the carpet came loose, actually tearing in places where little creatures had nibbled at it over the last decade. "Huh," Sirius said thoughtfully, a little stunned, as they scuttled backwards, rolling the carpet, revealing a pristine parquet floor trimmed with an intricate inlaid border like mosaics. The wood was warm, rich golden and glowed dully; it needed washing and waxing, but it was otherwise flawless.

"I wonder if all the rooms have parquet floors," Maia said thoughtfully. A house this old, she assumed there would be.

"Only one way to find out," Sirius grinned wolfishly, and Maia found herself smiling back as they pushed the rolled-up carpet up to the gallery banister, briefly peeking downstairs into the gloom of the front-hall to see if anyone was moving about down there. "We should probably get started on the bedrooms, too; Moony and I have a room apiece, but I sat on a bed in one of the spare rooms and something _moved_ under my bottom. Ran like mad."

"We could just…strip everything," Maia said, as they entered one of the bedrooms, staring about at the grubby, peeling wallpaper, the age-blackened portraits, the grim contents of little curio cabinets, the buzzing, dusty curtains, the bedding that had gone untouched for a decade. Sirius glanced at her from the corner of his eye, that sly grin spreading again, and he chuckled deeply.

Sirius liked the idea of stripping the rooms so much that he went at it with a conviction Maia thought was almost indecent: "It's extraordinarily satisfying," he said, wrenching up the carpet, as Maia tentatively tackled the bed, making a pile of bedding to be laundered out in the hall by the door, grimacing at the state of the mattress, which seemed to have been made a nest of by something or other over the last few years.

"This won't be the only mattress in this state," Sirius said grimly. "This house probably has every infestation known to wizard-kind."

"Like what?" Maia asked curiously. Sirius shot her a look.

"I keep forgetting you don't know what you should," he said, with a happy grin. "I hope my mother is turning in her grave!" And he told her about Kneazles, which he believed had nested in the mattress; they were a kind of higher-evolution cat, of which he was particularly fond, especially the pet of his friend Hermione Granger, a part-Kneazle named Crookshanks. Briefly opening a glass-fronted cabinet, Sirius frowned at the contents. "Best leave this job for another day. Looks like quite a bit of nasty stuff in here. I don't want you to touch any of it, alright?"

"Er…okay?" Maia said, glancing into the cabinet. The items inside, though creepy, seemed innocuous.

"My family," Sirius said, his expression twisting momentarily, "were very Dark wizards." Maia glanced up, frowning bemusedly.

"They were?"

"Take a look around you," Sirius said grimly. "If you need any more evidence, I don't know where you'll find it. This whole place is teeming with Dark artefacts. Oh, also, you shouldn't touch any of the books in the library."

"Are they moulded that bad?"

"Mould? Oh, probably. That's not my concern. You can curse books," Sirius said, describing various books he had heard of, for example the reader being unable to put the book down, ever, or causing the reader to speak in limericks the rest of their lives: Maia had no desire to do either, and she took Sirius's advice not to touch any of the books in the library, "at least until we can equip you properly against any mad books that might try to bludgeon you."

Sirius showed her into one last room; the peeling paint of the door shone with a silver plaque, on which a single letter was embossed; _A_.

"This was my cousin Andromeda's room whenever she used to stay here," Sirius said. "She was my favourite cousin. Her daughter is one of the newest recruits to the Order. You'll meet her soon enough. I thought this could be your room, it's one of the nicest."

The walls were half-panelled, very dusty and in need of a polish; a large Oriental rug was spread on the floor, threadbare and nibbled-at: the furniture was all very pretty, almost Louis-style, but so dusty she couldn't see any details; there were a lot of little tables; a folding-screen; and a delicate little fireplace was surrounded by a shelved, mirrored mantelpiece that would be perfect for photographs and trinkets; a chandelier dangled from the ceiling, a decade's worth of cobwebs draped over it, just as the wall-sconces featured ancient cobwebs trapped with dust. The walls above the panelling had once been prettily painted with a frieze, but now the paint was grubby and discoloured.

"It could do with a thorough clean first, of course," Sirius said. "Feel free to decorate it any way you like—in fact, since you're here, you might as well start redecorating the house to your tastes. It'll be yours, one day."

"Er…" Maia glanced at Sirius, taken aback, but he was distracted, hands in his pockets, examining a dusty photograph on the mantelpiece. Maia's new room had two huge windows that overlooked the park, dismal though it was to look at. Sirius gave her a strained smile.

"Come on, we should get downstairs," he said, gesturing her back out of the room again. Maia followed him back downstairs, quietly treading to the concealed kitchen entrance.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Rewriting this story, so hopefully it will run a lot smoother, and a little more fast-paced. But I'm still in love with the details I've created (especially for Diagon Alley!) so please be patient with them! Please review.


	3. Chapter 03

**A.N.**: Hiya there everyone. Okay, quiz time: Should I make this a George-OC fic, or a Fred-OC fic? I'm torn between the two; I think Maia would fit really well with either of them. So, please cast your ballots in my Poll on my profile page!

I got so many _ideas_ when I was rewriting this fic—and writing my story _Perpetual Underestimation_, which is a twin-Harry fic—and from watching _Hairy Bikers Bakeation _and _Rachel_ _Khoo's Little Paris Kitchen_. I really shouldn't watch cooking shows; I put on about thirty pounds just watching (though I tend to lose about ten from drooling!) _Huge_ influence is the film _The Boat That Rocked_. If you've seen it, you'll know why I love it, and what kind of an atmosphere will be created…!

Oh: in canon, Fred and George are shorter than Ron, but considerably taller than Harry, and broadly-built: I imagine Liam Hemsworth, the guy who plays delectable Gale Hawthorne, as a perfect candidate for the twins! With lovely red hair, of course. I kind of always imagined the Weasleys with rather darker red hair, not ginger, but…!

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><p><strong>Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_03_

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><p>Kicking dusty mounds of bedding to be laundered down the stairs, Maia followed Sirius as he rejoined Remus in the basement kitchen in preparation to meet guests. She left the laundry in a huge heap in a corner of the kitchen. Having seen no sign of one upstairs, and knowing that due to practicality it would probably be in one of the rooms leading off of the kitchen, Maia went in search of a laundry service.<p>

"I'm afraid you're not allowed to sit in on the meeting when people arrive, Maia," Remus said.

"Can I do anything?" Maia asked, and Remus smiled kindly.

"Actually, everyone will just have come from work," Remus said, checking his pocket-watch. "Something light to eat might be appreciated." Maia nodded, glancing at the pantries.

"Some sandwiches and sweet things?" she asked, and Remus smiled. She observed that a great quantity of the things from her own kitchen had appeared in Grimmauld Place, and it was with that familiarity that Maia set to work, cutting up loaves of bread that had Sirius weak at the knees, just inhaling their scent; she sliced a gammon she had broiled yesterday, swatting at Sirius's hand as he tried to sneak pieces of ham; set out a board of honey-drizzled cheese, ripe plums, cherries and tomatoes; prepared a platter of the fresh scones she had offered Professor Dumbledore earlier, with jars of homemade jam, clear and set honey, and fresh clotted-cream; and filled jugs with cordials and ice-water with chunks of fresh fruit and mint; refilled the cider jug, and set out cups for tea, glasses, plates and cutlery in stacks, for whoever wanted anything.

Sirius asked to be allowed to bring out one of the largest serving-platters to fill with everything he wanted to eat; "Sirius, you're like one of those starving stray alley-cats," Remus said. "If you binge on food in one go, you'll make yourself ill. Go steady."

"Excuse me, I am no _cat_," Sirius said, giving Remus a quirky look, and Maia chuckled as she poured hot water into the teapot.

"You could both do with putting on some weight," she said, glancing from Remus to Sirius. "You're both skin and grief." Sirius stuck out his tongue at Remus, as if to say, 'So there, _Mummy_ said I could!' and promptly reached for two scones, slathering them with fresh butter, copious amounts of jam and the fresh clotted-cream, descending into raptures over the quality of the food. Rolling his eyes at Sirius, Remus turned to Maia with a smile, cradling a ham-and-piccalilli sandwich.

"So, what are you going to do while we have our meeting?" he asked. "I think I have some old books you can look through."

"Actually, I thought…I could start cleaning," Maia said. "I was wondering if there's a laundry service in the house." Sirius grunted, mouth full of scone, a smear of jam across his lip; he licked his lips and pointed at one of the doors leading off the kitchen, clotted-cream dripping onto the table.

"I'm sorry, Padfoot, what was that?" Remus asked, eyes widening innocently.

"Through there," Sirius managed, taking a sip of tea. "I'll get it working for you. Although you're not supposed to _want_ to clean."

"Everything's just so _dirty_," Maia said, shivering. She was practically itching to take a scrubbing-brush to some of the bedrooms. Everything in the house needed a good thorough scrub, and a polish. The two men laughed.

"Well, I think that's a good idea," Remus said, smiling. "We've all brought whatever cleaning supplies we owned, they're all in the cupboard over there."

"Molly may have moved them," Sirius said. "When she attacked the kitchen."

"Oh, yes. Everyone should start arriving soon," Remus said, pulling a small, old pocket-watch out, examining the face, just as the doorbell clanged upstairs. Maia jumped as a sudden ear-splitting, blood-curdling screech rent the air, clapping her hands over her ears.

"I've asked them not to use the doorbell!" Remus moaned.

"—_Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers_—"

Remus jogged upstairs, leaving Maia in the kitchen with Sirius, who polished off his second scone, took a glug of tea, and showed her to a polished door set into the half-tiled, half-panelled wall, revealing a large, domed laundry-room, tiled and featuring many drying-racks, as well as the same old-fashioned, magically-powered laundering devices she had been used to using at home. Sirius got the thing working, and far sooner than expected, the room was humid and steamy, hot water churning with cloudy detergent, sheets and pillowcases scrubbing themselves clean, feather pillows and duvets wringing themselves, left to fluff and inflate by a warm fire in the corner of the room. Sirius disappeared upstairs to help Remus with the source of the screaming, leaving Maia to seek out the cleaning supplies.

She pulled open doors, finding storage-cupboards filled with everything from clocks to moulded wood for fires to a diamond bracelet, a teacup and an old birthday-card; these evidently had not been deemed disgusting enough to warrant a full scrubbing, but she soon pulled open a polished door that led into a small, tiled barrel-like room lined with shelves piled with cleaning products; brushes; silver scourers; tins of polish for everything from wood to copper to silver and gold; sponges; several pairs of gloves made from the same odd, shiny hide the ones Sirius had made appear had been made of; brushes; brooms; several ancient tins of paint; a very old mop and a few large buckets. Maia examined the tins of 'All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover' and the bottles of Doxycide, curious about what a Doxy was. There were bottles of fungicide for different types of mould and mould-like creatures Maia had never heard of, and a few moments later, the screams ended, leaving a ringing silence in which she heard the hushed whispers of several people in the upstairs hall. Brain whirring, she ducked out of the storage-room, arms laden with Magical Mess Remover, dishcloths and a bucket and mop, to find that the kitchen had gained several new occupants, none of them Remus or Sirius.

A very dark-skinned man dressed in long robes, wearing a single flashing gold hoop ring in his ear, sat relaxing at the table, eyes closed, looking tired, while a young woman with curly, waist-length metallic-turquoise hair braided over her crown chattered away happily as she popped gooseberries into her mouth, her hip perched against the table with her heavily-booted ankles crossed, and a third man in a heavy trench-coat was talking up the stairs to someone in the hall. A sodden dishcloth rested in the midst of a shining patch on the table, where half the contents of a bottle of beer had evidently been spilt, and as Maia closed the cupboard door, leaning the mop against the wall and setting the other items on the side, the man in the trench-coat grunted, "You, girl, get me a glass of water, would you!"

"_Oi_!" the blue-haired woman said indignantly.

"Not you," the grey-haired man grunted. "_Her_. Behind you." The blue-haired woman whirled around, so quickly she stumbled over her untied boot-laces and jerked the table a foot before she caught herself; the beer bottle tipped over with a crash, the contents spilling everywhere, while all the other bottles chinkled and rang against each other.

"Oops," she grimaced guiltily. Her dark, twinkly eyes swept over Maia, grinning; she had a heart-shaped face, and was a riot of colour, torn fishnets and bloody, bruised knees, falling-down odd socks, mismatched boots (one glittery patent cherry-red, the other iridescent purplish-black, with mismatched shoelaces, buckles undone, one tongue almost falling out, definitely caught beneath her foot at one time or another); Maia glimpsed a flash of brilliant orange ribbon from under her almost criminally short pink and black plaid skirt, as she grabbed her wand from her waist, where two chunky, pyramid-studded belts heavy with chains were draped; she swore under her breath and brandished her wand, the mess cleaning itself up, light flashing and illuminating her fuchsia dog-collar choker and metal chain necklace, narrow straps from a tiny black halter-top, and the slogan on the denim-coloured tank-top she wore over a long-sleeved t-shirt; _Weird Sisters_. She liked the girl's top, beneath the tank; the sleeves were a soft olive-green, printed with a floral motif and butterflies of different styles and colours, and vintage keys printed in faded black; the body of the top was multicoloured stripes, and she wore a half-sleeve of mesh on her left hand, with a chunky ring, and a studded wrist-cuff that featured the strangest watch-face Maia had ever seen; twelve little hands, surrounded by little planets.

Maia went to the dresser, taking down a thankfully pristine glass, and went to the deep porcelain sink to fill it with water, setting it neatly on the table because the grey-haired man was still talking up the stairs. The young woman canted her head to the side thoughtfully, tapping the tip of her wand to the bottle—before Maia's eyes, it refilled itself.

"Wotcher!" the woman grinned. "Sorry about the mess, I'm dead clumsy. I've told Sirius he needs to find his old sippy-cup for me to use! I can't be trusted with a bottle!" Maia grinned. She liked this woman, undeniably punky and eccentric in appearance, speaking with a permanent smile, and Maia liked her hand-knitted socks, her dog-collar, and her hair. "Blimey, you _must_ be Maia! You don't half look like my mum!" Maia started. Look like _her_ mum? "Sirius _should_ be down here to introduce us!" the woman continued, with a sigh as she clamped her hands on her waist, shoulders thrown back, and glanced over her shoulder at the foot of the stairs. She turned back to Maia, who had been watching her long, turquoise hair flick and twirl. "I'm Tonks. I'm Sirius's cousin Andromeda's kid."

"The…the Auror?" Maia asked, not hiding her surprise; the woman grinned.

"That's me!" she said proudly. "Sirius tell you about me?"

"He mentioned you," Maia nodded. He had mentioned that his favourite cousin's daughter was a Dark wizard-catcher; he hadn't mentioned she was the colourful wizarding equivalent of Abby Sciuto.

"When did you get here, then?" Tonks asked.

"About an hour and a half ago," Maia said.

"Dumbledore was here?" The slow, deep, oddly comforting voice emanated from the black man, who opened very dark eyes, which landed on Maia.

"Yes. I'm not sure when he left," Maia said uncomfortably, flushing slightly under the man's gaze. "He was talking to Remus in the library while Sirius showed me around the house."

"Did he mention whether he would be attending the meeting this evening?" the man asked.

"He was gone before I got back downstairs," Maia said. The man frowned thoughtfully.

"Oh—Maia, this is Kingsley Shacklebolt," Tonks said, and the man smiled at her. "And—Moody, that's disgusting!" Maia stared, feeling nauseated. She had just watched the grey-haired man pluck out a round, vivid, electric-blue eye out of his own skull and plonk it into the glass of water she had laid out. He had stumped across the kitchen from the stairwell with mismatched footsteps; Maia had noticed a clawed, carved wooden leg. That wasn't the worst of the man's appearance; grey-haired and grizzled, he had a face unlike Maia had ever seen; it looked as though it had been carved out of weathered wood by someone who only had a vague idea of what human features resembled, and was none too skilled with a chisel. Every inch of skin seemed to be scarred; his mouth looked like a diagonal gash, and a large chunk of his nose was missing. The man's other eye—the one not whizzing in a thousand directions of its own accord—was small, dark and beady.

Tonks gave the man a slightly repulsed frown. "Maia, this is Alastor Moody."

"Hi," Maia said weakly, recovering from her shock. _What happened to his face?_ she gasped internally.

"'Lo," he nodded, his blue eye spinning bizarrely in the glass of water, peering at her with his dark, beady, natural one, his other eye-socket empty. Sirius had told her about Mad-Eye Moody, but he hadn't mentioned, well…how _scarred_ he was.

"Mad-Eye's an Auror, too," Tonks said happily, hand draped on the back of 'Mad-Eye's' chair, hand on her hip. "Kingsley is, as well—he's in charge of the manhunt for Sirius." Maia glanced quickly at Mr Shacklebolt, who gave her a smiling wink.

"Oh, good, you're introduced," said a voice, and Maia glanced up; Sirius had dropped downstairs. He caught sight of Mad-Eye's eye in the glass, rolled his eyes, and smiled at Maia.

"Maia…you couldn't pour us a brew, could you?" Mr Shacklebolt asked wearily.

"Busy day?" Sirius asked, somewhat restlessly, as Maia set a teacup on a saucer and filled it, adding a splash of milk and passing it over to Kingsley, who accepted it with a warm smile of thanks.

"Raids," Kingsley said, rubbing his face tiredly and yawning.

"And I had to get Dung out of a tight spot," Tonks remarked, with a bemused frown, as Mr Moody took his eye out of the glass, pushing it back into his skull. "Mad-Eye…" She shook her head, trailing off and glancing away pointedly. Maia turned away, shivering, and watched Sirius levitate the kettle over to the teapot to refill it with some fresh teabags; the lid lifted of its own accord, and the kettle poured boiling water over two teabags that had levitated themselves into the pot. Maia poured out several cups of tea, Sirius handing them around.

"Mad-Eye?" he asked, but the grizzled older man shook his shaggy grey hair, taking a hipflask out of one of his deep pockets, and took a deep draw from it, his magical eye now pivoting around the room.

"Where'd all this food come from?" Tonks asked delightedly, smiling as she slathered butter and gooseberry-jam onto a scone, buckled boots jingling as she jigged her foot erratically, her ankle draped over her knee.

"Maia," Sirius said simply.

"You made these?" Tonks asked, smiling. And then, around a mouthful of scone, "I can't cook to save my life!"

"How do you _survive_?" Sirius asked curiously. "You don't seem the type to resort to rats."

"We don't all have your fixation with the _Rattus Rattus_, Sirius," Tonks said, crinkling her little nose, as Maia stared at Sirius. "Mum keeps me in stews and things—gets a bit boring having the same thing three days in a row, but until I can cook for myself, I'm not going to complain."

"Always wisest, where Andromeda's concerned," Sirius said idly, licking his fingers of blackcurrant jam, and Tonks chuckled, eyes twinkling.

"What's going on in there?" Mr Moody grunted, his vivid blue eye focused on the door to the laundry-room. Maia got the impression that perhaps he could see _through_ the door.

"I thought I'd get a jumpstart on all the laundry that needs doing," Maia said, tucking a lock of hair away from her face. "There's no point scrubbing this place clean if we get into bed between dirty sheets." Tonks snorted, grinning.

"Dirty sheets," she chuckled to herself. "_Dirty_!" Maia grinned back.

It was strange, being in a house with people she had met little more than two hours ago. Sirius seemed to delight in the number of people who slowly trickled downstairs, ushered by Remus, who got up to let everyone in before they rang the doorbell, Mad-Eye using his magical eye (which could see through _everything_, making Maia wary of her choice of knickers, a fact she confessed to Tonks, making her snort Butterbeer through her nostrils in a peal of giggles, collapsing under the table; Sirius asked if Tonks had been sneaking Maia's potent cider) to see up through the floor to the front step. Gradually, more teacups were filled, more bottles of Butterbeer uncorked, more jugs of iced cordial and cider refilled. Maia was given a bottle of Butterbeer to try, as she had never had it; it tasted wonderful, much nicer than any beer she had ever tried. Several newcomers (an excitable Dedalus Diggle in a violet-silk top-hat, and a stately-looking woman named Emmeline) tried little glasses of Maia's home-brewed apple cider, and the plum brandy. Maia was introduced to each of the witches and wizards—and there were quite a lot of them who trickled in now that the working-day had ended—who came by, and helped Remus and Sirius by hanging up cloaks in the hall cupboard when new Order members arrived and refilling drinks, making more sandwiches and producing more treats the more people arrived and the less food there was available for them to snack on.

"You alright, Maia?" Sirius asked. "You don't have to hover in the shadows, you know. Sit down." He drew out a polished chair beside his and patted the seat.

Each of the witches and wizards she met smiled at her kindly, their gazes taking in her features, remarking to Sirius the striking resemblance they had to each other. Each of the witches and wizards who arrived were dressed as eccentrically as Tonks, in her colourful punk regalia; Moody, in his worn trench-coat; and Kingsley, in his long, sweeping robes and gold earring. Besides Tonks, perhaps Maia's favourite was one of the last to arrive. Two rather tall, slim men with flaming red hair—the elder, very little; the younger, a long ponytail—arrived at the same time, and the resemblance between them was so uncanny they could be no other but father and son.

Bill, Sirius had briefly mentioned as liaising with goblins, and working at the wizard bank. With only this information, his appearance came as a shock to Maia; Bill was a _dish_.

He wore an earring with what looked like a fang dangling from it, and his clothes would not have been amiss at a gig or one of the more choice rock clubs in the town near where Maia lived. His boots weren't of leather, though, but of the same hide the gloves in the downstairs cupboard were made of: _dragon_-hide. He gave her a very warm hug, grinning as he rumpled her hair the way he would a sister, and Remus introduced Bill's father, Arthur Weasley, the balding, bespectacled man who said eagerly, "I hear you went to school with _Muggles_! You must tell me—"

"Is everybody here yet?" Moody grunted irritably up the stairs, and Mr Weasley broke off, glancing eagerly at the stairs.

"Nearly, Alastor," Remus said patiently, and Mr Weasley's plump, kind-faced wife Molly was ushered downstairs, doing a double-take at the spread on the table, the overflowing pantries, the sound of the clacking laundry service. She beamed and drew Maia into a hug that she had rarely experienced…it was the hug of a _mum_, and Mrs Weasley declared that Maia was "far too thin", making Sirius and Remus chuckle, relating to Mrs Weasley that Maia had shared her sentiment that they were "skin and grief".

Next to arrive was Ailith Monaghan, a "Muggle-born" witch, born from a non-magical family, a right old English _toff_ whose brothers had gone to Eton and all that; she had eyes the colour of cornflowers, light-brunette hair falling to her lower-back in silky, natural waves, and a permanent ink-stain on her right forefinger: Maia noticed how alert Sirius suddenly seemed to her every movement; Ailith was incredibly beautiful, and she carried a camera jostling off her slender hip, and while Maia sat on one of the kitchen-counters with a Butterbeer and a plum, Tonks chatting away animatedly about Bill Weasley's brother Charlie, who "wrestles dragons in Romania; he has arms the size of _basilisks_, it's ridiculous! We were in the same year at Hogwarts, but he was in Gryffindor, of course—all the Weasleys have been!" Ailith covertly took several photographs, smiling softly when Maia noticed, and she winked, before turning back to Mr Weasley, who seemed to be obsessed with all things Muggle-related.

Several more members of the Order were ushered downstairs, and Maia refilled the jugs and set out more fruit and sandwiches and a fresh Victoria sponge, and tried not to make herself too conspicuous, listening to the many conversations going on around her and feeling particularly out of place. Remus sidled up to her, smiling.

"The meeting's going to start in a few minutes," he said quietly. "We're just waiting for Amos Diggory." Sirius had told her that because she wasn't seventeen, and had had no clue who Lord Voldemort even was until Sirius had told her, she wasn't allowed to join the Order, and they couldn't risk security breaches by informing teenagers.

"I can start cleaning," Maia said quietly, almost to herself. She _hated_ grime. It made her skin crawl; she didn't mind clutter, and loved being comfortable in her own home, but this place was just… She wondered whether Jack the Ripper had lived here at some point or another.

"Just promise me that if anything's buzzing, or rattling, or sniggering, or moaning, or scuttling, you won't touch it?" Sirius said, sidling up with yet another scone, and Maia raised her eyebrows. _Weird request_.

"Okay," she said, nodding.

"And you might want to start writing a list of everything you think needs doing," Remus said, as if in an afterthought. "I'm not sure where Kreacher is—he's still a little skittish, after being alone so long—but he _should_ help you if you ask him." Maia nodded, though the concept of this Kreacher person as elusive a figure as her own father. She picked up the cleaning products she had found in the cupboard, dumping them into the bucket as she tucked the dragon-hide gloves Sirius had given her into the pocket of her handmade summer-dress, and picked up the mop.

"I'll get all the windows open to air the house out," Maia said, "and strip the rooms Sirius and I didn't get to earlier."

"Are you going to have us waxing floors on our hands and knees?" Remus asked, and Sirius grimaced at the idea of manual labour.

"What's that about you being on your knees, Remus?" Tonks asked brightly, hopping into place beside Maia with a saucy smile, her eyes twinkling. Remus's lips twitched with a smile, but he seemed to not let himself ever look at Tonks for too long.

"Hello, Tonks," he chuckled softly. "Just discussing the cleaning with Maia."

"Oh, I see—that's really nice, you know," Tonks said, fiddling with her wand absent-mindedly as her sharp, sparkling dark eyes flitted from Maia to Remus, "you bring this poor girl here and force her to clean."

"It was Maia's idea!" Remus said, at the same time Maia said, "I don't mind."

"Why don't I help you get started?" Tonks suggested. "I'll stay up in the hall and watch for Amos." Remus nodded, and Tonks followed, tripping over her own feet twice before they reached the foot of the stone stairs, and Maia had to watch that she didn't fall down said stairs tripping over her shoelaces.

"How did you become an Auror?" Maia asked curiously.

"With difficulty!" Tonks chuckled, lowering her voice as they reached the hall, casting the moth-eaten curtains a look. "I almost failed Stealth and Tracking; I'm dead clumsy. Thank Merlin Remus got rid of that troll's-leg umbrella stand. I knocked it over three times in five minutes the first afternoon I was here."

"I meant…how does one become an Auror?" Maia asked. "What's the process?" They made their way upstairs, remaining on the first floor; Maia tugged, jiggled, painstakingly shoved and sometimes kicked windows open, stripping beds down to the mattresses, after Tonks investigated to see whether anything was living in them, Maia's hands encased in the dragon-hide gloves just in case, and while she did so, Tonks told her about the process one had to endure to train to become an Auror; she was the first to be accepted in three years at the Academy, and was the newest recruit to the Auror Office, Moody having come out of retirement and now mentoring her.

"You know, you won't be the only kid here for long," Tonks said, grunting as she helped Maia batter a small bathroom-window further open, the hinges so badly rusted and covered in ancient paint. "Molly's bringing the rest of her kids as soon as Hogwarts finishes for the summer. And I think their friend will be coming as well. I haven't met them, but Sirius says Ron and Hermione are nice. They were the first to realise Sirius was innocent, at least."

"Yeah, he told me they're alright," Maia nodded, thinking, a little glad she wouldn't be the only teenager here in this dank house. Peering down into the street, she said, "Is that Mr Diggory?" Tonks peered out of the window, whistling, and the man on the step glanced up, smiling.

"I'll be down in a mo; don't ring the doorbell," she called, and Tonks grinned at Maia before turning and darting away: halfway down the stairs, Maia heard a yelp, a series of bangs, an "_Ow_!", and the blood-curdling screams she had heard earlier began again. When they stopped, she could hear Tonks hastily whispering apologies, and a low, rumbling laugh she thought might have been Sirius's.

Left to her own devices, Maia set to work with the diligence her aunt had noted her for when she cleaned: Maia would bet once it was stripped and redecorated, the entire house would look different, with some polish to the panelling, the glass guards over the wall-sconces thoroughly cleaned, but they couldn't redecorate without everything being stripped and _thoroughly_ scrubbed.

This was where she would be living, until she was seventeen at the very least. This was where her dad had grown up, though she was sure the house had looked far more handsome when he had been alive to enjoy his family here. This was where her fugitive uncle was living in hiding, after twelve years in prison and two years on the run…

A sudden pang in her chest had Maia wanting to make this house _nice_ for him to live in, to change his perception of it from the place he had hated as a child.

Outside it was blisteringly, almost uncomfortably hot, and with the curtains pushed aside, the windows open, the house started to look a little different, to _feel_ different, too, the open windows and the hot breeze that came through them starting to dry out the dampness, to kill off the mould, to spread sunshine into the rooms, onto the gallery. Where she could, Maia tugged paintings off the walls, stacking them in one place at the top of each staircase, but she found that some paintings were resilient to her efforts, no matter how much she tugged.

With her dragon-hide—_dragon hide!_—gloves and the promise to Sirius not to touch anything that made noises of its own accord, or the contents of curiosity-cabinets, she set to work, going from room to room, stripping beds, opening windows, tearing up carpets, revealing very handsome, mostly unmarred parquet floors. Opening all the windows as far as they would go, she gathered up the laundry in piles, tossing them over the gallery banister to the front-hall below, leaving the doors open to air out the corridors, neatly rolling the carpets in piles at the gallery banister.

With a scream, she fled a room in which she had upset a colony of spiders the size of dinner-plates: the wardrobe in another bedroom shuddered and wobbled threateningly whenever she passed it; and a grandfather-clock on the same floor as the playroom and her bedroom continued to spit bolts whenever she passed it; strange noises issued from one of the upstairs bathrooms Maia wasn't quite up to investigating without the help of someone who had a wand.

She avoided the dining-room, in which the curtains had been buzzing, and entered the library for the first time, remembering her promise to Sirius not to touch any of the books, due to the threat of some of them perhaps being cursed. She was admittedly a little daunted by what she found in the library: high-ceilinged to say the least, the two enormous windows on the ground-floor were mirrored in the upstairs gallery, which wrapped around, fitted with heavily-laden bookcases, to a sinuously-carved staircase in the upper-left-hand corner of the room: tucked between the foot of the stairs and the corner was an armchair, but much of the open space was dedicated to a large round table with sinuously-carved, upholstered chairs. There were two handsome armchairs before the beautifully-tiled fireplace, but the felt of the billiards table had become faded and discoloured with age, stained. A low, beautiful sideboard cabinet featured a very handsome set of cut-crystal tumblers and decanters, as well as a silver and onyx chess-set; since there was no noise emanating from within, Maia explored the cupboards and drawers, finding everything a man could possibly need for enjoyment: mouldy cards; die; a felt poker table-topper; chequers; a case of aged cigars; bottles of untouched whisky and very old port. On the ground-floor, the walls were half-panelled with bookcases, the tops covered with all sorts of trinkets; instruments; photographs; ceramics and sometimes quite gruesome artefacts. She had already promised Sirius not to touch the books; she didn't need to promise not to touch some of these things, they made her spine tingle so badly. Briefly glancing upstairs, she saw the open gallery featured the same dangling lamps as in the main hall and upstairs galleries, and the distinct smell of old books and mould was pervasive.

Her foot sank through the seat of one of the carved chairs when she attempted to climb it to reach the curtain-pole: she ended up wrenching up the carpet, and the curtains in the upstairs windows were in such a terrible state of disrepair they would be promptly binned, so she tore them down rather than unhooking them: the enormous windows were kicked open, but the downstairs windows were easier to open, and she stood with one foot perched precariously on the sides of the chair-frame as the near-invisible door to the kitchen opened, hushed chatter and low laughs issuing from the hall. She wobbled on the chair, giving a decisive tug, and with a rip, the curtain dropped to the floor with an accompanying billowing cloud of dust. Coughing violently and spluttering, her handkerchief over her mouth and nose, Maia waved the dust away, stumbling out of the library, and she said goodbye to most of the members of the Order she had earlier been introduced to. Sirius standing at the front-door, his eyes closed and basking in the dazzling sunshine that still scorched the city, he ushered everybody out, and Maia watched as they all promptly seemed to disappear at a spot just beyond the foot of the steps.

Finally Sirius closed and locked the front-door. He smiled and reached out to brush a smudge of dust off her nose, and Maia dropped downstairs after him, her shoulders and arms aching; she kicked the washing down the stairs, and found Mrs Weasley gathering it up again with her wand when she reached the bottom-step, flicking her wand so the bedding, pillows, quilts and duvets all soared through to the laundry-room.

There were now only a handful of people left downstairs: Remus; Mr and Mrs Weasley and Bill; Tonks; Ailith and Mr Diggory. Maia had to admit, sitting side by side, Bill and Tonks so looked the poster-children for Wizard punk that she felt the sudden urge to tuck her hair behind her ears to show the triple diamond forward-helix piercings to her right ear and the tragus and the tiny gold tragus piercing and teeny gold-ring forward-helix on her left ear as a mark of solidarity.

"—got to be careful," Bill Weasley was saying darkly, frowning at the papers Mr Diggory was poring over. "Goblins are—Maia!" He shot her a very handsome smile, and Mr Diggory jumped slightly and tapped the papers with his wand while Mrs Weasley gave them a disapproving look; the papers disappeared, and Mr Diggory gave her a smile. Bill having plans for the evening and Mr Diggory expected at home, Remus showed them out of the house a few moments later, talking in low voices about goblins.

Remus encouraged Maia to put him, Sirius and Tonks to work helping prepare the dinner, since neither of them knew the first thing about cooking muscles, and "Moony's specialty was always chocolate-cake."

"And a full roast dinner, thank you," Remus added.

"Oh yeah!" Sirius grinned. "So, what do you need, Maia?"

It was strange asking for things; strange cooking in a brand-new kitchen; Tonks made her laugh for the first time in a while, tripping up and knocking things over, and Remus and Sirius gently poked fun at each other about failed cooking experiments when they were younger ("duck _a la banana_ thankfully went with Prongs to the grave"). From the conversation, she gleaned they had once shared a flat, and while Remus had made sure there was always a moist, iced chocolate-cake in the kitchen, Sirius seemed to have made sure there was always beer and whisky, all the while keeping the greasy parts of his motorcycle on the dining-table, blasting his music into the late hours, and "getting drunk and having sex with girls."

"So…what music d'you listen to?" Tonks asked, as Maia set her to work with the safest task, that of discarding any of the open muscles: she had sat Mrs Weasley at the table with a glass of cider and a stack of Maia's "Muggle" cookbooks, Mr Weasley coveting the front few pages of a Jamie Oliver cookbook that showed the spread of electrical gadgets he used in the kitchen. Maia answered Tonks, expounding on the festivals she had already managed to go to this summer, the day after her exams had ended.

"I've got Muggle cousins—their taste's _terrible_!"

"If they're teenagers, it most likely will be. I prefer Sixties rock, and classical."

"Remus said you never went to Hogwarts," Tonks said. "It true you've been going to a Muggle school all this time?"

"Yeah," Maia sad, and Tonks' eyes widened, as Mr Weasley's head perked up.

"How'd you manage, with your magic?"

"It was fine, most of the time," Maia said. "When I was much younger I couldn't stop weird things from happening, especially when I was angry, or upset. But I can control it easily now. It's just when I get angry that I can't control happens. I have a temper."

"That, you get from your uncle," Remus remarked, and Sirius shot him a deadpan look before his face illuminated with a broad grin.

"I'm surprised the Improper Use of Magic Office didn't come after you before last week," Tonks said thoughtfully. "Usually kids who use underage magic get a warning from the Ministry every time they use it. The Trace keeps track of young witches and wizards, except when they're living under the roofs of an adult witch or wizard. Still, I'll bet it could come in handy later in life, being at a Muggle school for years."

"How do you mean, come in handy?"

"Well, if you go into Muggle-relations in the Ministry, or something like that," Tonks said thoughtfully. "My dad's Muggle-born, but there are loads of wizards who don't know a thing about fitting in with Muggles."

Maia frowned. The only difference she could see with witches and wizards, and Muggles, was that their clothing was more old-fashioned, colourful and eccentric, and that they did most things with their wands rather than their hands. She was sure she would learn the subtleties of complex magic when she got to Hogwarts, and the nuances that set wizards apart from Muggles, but the differences she noticed were that Bill's boots had been made of dragon-hide rather than leather, Mad-Eye's replacement eye could see through the back of his skull, and Tonks' favourite band was a wizard band called the "Weird Sisters" instead of _Metallica_. Mr Weasley had been incredibly curious about her unrestricted access to "eccel-tricity" and, yes, Mr Diggle wore a top-hat, but other than that…

While Tonks went through the muscles, de-bearding them, Maia softened a finely-chopped shallot and some garlic in some melted butter in a deep copper pot with some chopped parsley.

Traditionally, white wine was used for _moules marinières_—but the most available alcohol in the Hobbit-hole had always been the home-brewed apple cider, and Maia loved using it in the dish, giving the shellfish a faintly sweet, fruity taste.

She added the muscles and steamed them, then adding a dollop of crème fraîche she tossed the lot together so all the juices from the muscles mixed together, and as Mrs Weasley charmed a bread-knife to slice up a fresh artisan loaf, Remus flicked his wand and the table set itself neatly; Sirius refilled jugs of cider and cordial and poured wine; and Tonks fell backwards off her chair when the back legs she had been leaning against collapsed beneath her. Ailith had to haul her off the floor, both laughing, and Maia hopped over Tonks' tangled legs, placing the pot on the braided heat-mat on the table.

"It _is_ lovely having someone else do the cooking!" Mrs Weasley declared, beaming at Maia as she dished up.

"My mum used to say that's why she had me," Tonks said. "'Course, I can't scramble an egg, so…!" Mrs Weasley chuckled, setting the recipe-books aside.

"This looks delicious, Maia," Ailith said, in her soft, warm voice, smoothing her skirt beneath her as she sat down, and Tonks managed to right herself as Maia started dishing up. Tired and exhilarated from cleaning, the sun pouring through the half-moon window, the warmth from the sun and the laundry-room making her sleepy, it was a very cosy, bright atmosphere in the kitchen as they laughed and talked—and fought over the last of the muscles, in the case of Sirius and Remus. Over dinner, they talked about a lot of things; mostly Maia listened to what they were saying, and asked questions when she didn't understand something—which, frustrating though it was for a girl as smart as she was, was most of the time; she learned little bits about the wizarding world. It was strange, but fun; there were no muscles left by the end of the meal, and Sirius and Mr Weasley were both daubing at the juices in the pot with bits of bread, while Tonks grinned and thanked Maia, telling her she would be telling her mother that she could now, in theory, cook a French shellfish dish.

"I could teach you really easy dishes, if you want," Maia offered, smiling at the thought of Tonks loose in the kitchen with live flames, knives and whisks.

"I might take you up on that!" Tonks grinned. "Thanks for dinner!" Tonks grinned, grabbing her for a hug. "I'll bring pudding the next time I invite myself for dinner!" Maia smiled as Tonks wrapped a surprisingly sombre, neatly-fitted navy trench-coat around herself and popped the collar up, yawning as she looped a bag over her head. Ailith donned a light cardigan, and she kissed both Remus' and Sirius' cheeks before departing. Maia found she couldn't feel too miserable with Tonks around, and hoped it wouldn't be too long before she saw her or Ailith again. "And I might bring some stuff to keep you happy. I've got a few doubles in my record-collection that you can have."

"You don't have to do that," Maia said.

"Oh, come off it! I always wanted a sister—and you're sort of like my cousin now," Tonks grinned. "Plus, you'll be stuck with only these two to keep you entertained." She jerked her head at Sirius and Remus, who both pretended to be suitably insulted and indignant.

"We love you too, _Nymphadora_," Sirius said drily, and Maia raised her eyebrows.

"_Don't_ call me Nymphadora, Sirius!" Tonks exclaimed, shuddering. "It's Tonks."

"Well, good-night, whoever you are," Remus smirked.

Sirius yawned as he closed and locked the door after Mr and Mrs Weasley, and the house seemed suddenly very quiet. Maia could already detect the effects of having opened all the windows in the house, the hot sun and the breeze beginning to cleanse the house of the scent of mildew and decay, and the rooms already looked different with the threadbare, dusty carpets torn up, revealing the polished parquet floors. Sirius and Remus noted the start Maia had made, and the laundry continued to wash and iron itself through the night.

The evening wasn't over yet: the prospect of going to sleep in a room as grimy as the one Sirius had set aside for her, even if it had once been one of the prettier bedrooms leading off the playroom on the third-floor, had her skin crawling. Even if she brought her large daybed out of the trunk Professor Dumbledore had packed her belongings into, tomorrow morning she would have to put her feet down on the dirty oriental rug—and who knew what would try and nest in her shoes?!

Sirius and Remus helped her—they had cleaned two other bedrooms, having spent a week here in Grimmauld Place already—as she tore up the oriental rug, revealing another perfect floor, and while Sirius and Remus used magic to strip the ancient, grubby wallpaper off, an enchanted brush scrubbing any remnants away, several tough, soft cloths washed the panelling on the lower-half of the walls, a mop washing the floor; a tin of wax followed, the floor and the panelling glowing in the dying sunshine while Maia used marble cleanser and polish to treat the fireplace, washing and polishing the intricate shelved mantelpiece, polishing the mirror until it shone. Remus, apparently a whiz when it came to magical creatures, detected no unsavoury residents in the furniture, and the polished dresser was given the okay for her to search through later.

Remus levitated the trunk of Maia's personal belongings up to the bedroom after the wax had dried, and he and Sirius managed to extract Maia's large daybed, which she set up in the centre of the room at an angle.

The windows had to literally be blasted open by Sirius, when they had refused to budge. The entire room seemed transformed from the stripping of the wallpaper and the cleaning of the chandelier, sconces and mantelpiece.

"Um…" She glanced at Sirius before he followed Remus' example and left her alone to get ready for bed. He glanced over his shoulder, expression inviting. She licked her lips. "I've…got chickens at the Hobbit-hole… I was hoping tomorrow-morning I could go with someone to feed them, and collect the eggs, and loot the vegetable-garden."

Sirius grinned. "Absolutely. We'll go first thing, if you like. I'll mention it to Moony." Maia smiled, and nodded, and Sirius left her alone.

Her muscles sore, after a shower in the spotless marble and rosewood bathroom downstairs, it wasn't until Maia had changed into her favourite pyjamas and climbed into bed that she paused to think, staring up at the ceiling.

The lingering light of an evening summer sky filled the room with warm navy shadows, and she could just see, through the windows left open to the breeze (the moth-eaten curtains removed), the stars twinkling high above, and she wondered what she had gotten herself into.

Little over eight hours ago, she had been anticipating Professor Dumbledore's arrival at the Hobbit-hole to talk about her recent breach of the International Statute of Secrecy: she had wanted to ask, four years too late, to enter the best school of magic in the world. She had been completely orphaned, believed herself to have been without _any_ surviving family, only to discover she had a fugitive uncle wrongly convicted of thirteen counts of murder, who was host to the headquarters of a secret magical society that fought against the most evil wizard in the world.

Until September the first, at the very least, Maia would be living with two men she had never even met before or heard anything about: she had jumped at the chance to leave her home because she didn't want to be left on her own. But what _had_ she gotten herself into?

There was a soft knock on the door, and Maia lifted her head and glanced over as it opened; Sirius stuck his head into the room, long dark hair falling into his face.

"If you have trouble sleeping," he said quietly, "Andromeda used to count the stars." He pointed up, and Maia saw, with a soft gasp of delight, that the ceiling was given over to an array of glittering, twinkling stars: she recognised a few of the constellations; saw Venus; and was certain the Aurora Borealis had flickered in the corner of the room just as sleep tinged her perception of reality, unashamedly clutching her old doll.

She was in her _father's_ childhood home. Anything she had jumped into without thought couldn't be so terrible. She had an _uncle_. Tonks was vivacious and very clever; Bill a complete dish; Remus was very kind, and Mr and Mrs Weasley exemplified what Maia believed true _parents_ would be like.

This house may be prime material for filming-locations for a horror film, but the people who lived within it weren't: they were kind; had a great sense of humour; and seemed to like her.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review!


	4. Chapter 04

**A.N.**: Hiya. I have recently watched _The Boat That Rocked_ again, and my love for Midnight Mark has been revamped: In my brain, Sirius looks like him: Tom Wisdom was about 35 during filming, the same age Sirius and Remus are in _Order of the Phoenix_. I keep seeing Matt Smith (_Doctor Who_) as Remus. Maybe it's the bowtie. Seems something a teacher would wear.

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><p><strong>Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_04_

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><p>The house was truly one of those ancient manors that went <em>bump<em> in the night. After waking several times in the night, the sun splashed brilliantly against the bare parquet floor and Maia pulled herself out of bed; she loved her bed, but she had never been lazy, and rising early ensured fresh bread and a healthy appetite for the big breakfasts she loved.

The lilac sky tinged with golden fuchsia, remnant of a glorious sunset the evening before, the shadows were chased away from the corners of the house as the sky became a clear forget-me-not; Maia made her way downstairs, feeling the effects of the windows having been thrown open as wide as they could go, the heat of the day having continued into the night and making it almost uncomfortable to sleep, but also scorched everything that had been damp and decaying, and getting rid of that dusty, rotting smell. She pulled on a pair of beige crochet TOMS, and her handmade silk dressing-gown, with its kimono styling and vibrant, chrysanthemum-blossom prints, and made her way downstairs, padding through the empty corridors. She dodged the grandfather clock, and yawned as she made her way down to the kitchen, where she found Remus, going through piles of papers and books with cracked, aged spines, looking decidedly cheerless.

"Hello," she said softly, and Remus gave a little start and glanced up; his lips twitching in a smile.

"You're up early!" he exclaimed softly, smiling, glancing at the little carriage-clock on the mantelpiece.

"So are you," Maia noted, smiling back, and she slipped into a chair opposite him, tucking her leg beneath her as she reached for the teapot. "What are you working on?"

"Legislation," Remus sighed. "Amos asked me to have a look through it. I thought I'd get started on it early if we're to be cleaning all day. What's got you up early?"

"I'm always up early," Maia said, and Remus smiled tiredly. "My aunt used to say there are twenty-four usable hours in every day, thank you very much. Anyway, the house was up earlier than I was."

"Yes," Remus said, with a wry smile. "Sirius is convinced Kreacher hasn't cleaned anything properly since his mother died. Professor Dumbledore only just secured the house a few days ago with adequate protection for what we need."

"I haven't met Kreacher yet," Maia said thoughtfully.

"He'll be lurking around here somewhere," Remus said, his face falling as he looked at another stack of papers.

"What legislation are you looking at, anyway? Do you work in the Ministry of Magic?" Maia asked curiously.

"No. No, I…don't work at the Ministry," Remus said, and there was something in his voice that she couldn't quite name. He gave her a very brief smile. "Are you hungry?" he asked, and Maia nodded; lifting his wand, Remus flicked it, and a bowl filled itself with the porridge stirring itself in a copper saucepan on the hob.

"Is it different?"

"Is what different?" Remus asked kindly, watching her drizzle honey and chopped dates onto her porridge, just as she had watched his wand.

"Using a wand to do magic, rather than just…doing it," Maia said, sipping her tea, eyes still on his wand.

"Have you been using magic without a wand?" Remus asked, and his voice was either curious or unsettled, she couldn't decide which.

"All the time," she said softly. "I didn't realise I could Apparate, consciously. Professor Dumbledore says you have to study to do it. But I've been able to do it for a while, without knowing it was called that."

"Does magic always do for you what you'd like?" Remus asked, and Maia nodded.

"Usually," she said, spooning up some porridge. Remus watched her carefully, and she could practically see the cogs whirring. She fidgeted awkwardly. "Is that bad?"

"No! No, it's not…not _bad_, per se," Remus said, fiddling with some of his papers. He swept his pale eyes over her. "It's just…rather dangerous to have let you get away with it for so long. But you don't have a wand, and the Ministry doesn't count infractions before you buy your first wand…"

"Where do you buy wands in Britain?" she asked curiously. Her knowledge of foreign wizarding communities was rather extensive; but she had never visited the wizarding parts of Britain before. Her life was a series of inconsistencies.

"Well, the best place is Ollivander's, in Diagon Alley," Remus smiled. And he told her all about the magically-concealed network of streets and shops hidden behind a famous pub called the Leaky Cauldron, about his first experience of buying a wand and his school-things, which brought them onto the subject of what she would study at Hogwarts, "…so you'll be able to control what you Transfigure, and then, you'll have to take History of Magic lessons, which were dull beyond reason even when I was a student."

"I'd like to learn about Hogwarts," Maia said, kneading away: the breakfast bowls had been washed up, and batches of fresh dough were rising in bowls as she lifted trays of sausage-rolls; cheese-straws and both sweet currant and savoury bacon and caraway scones out of the oven, setting them on the dishtowels spread on the table to cool: a large quantity of dough had just been tipped out onto the flour-dusted table, a bowl of dried fruits and orange zest ready to be kneaded into it; she was making hot-cross buns for later.

"Well, as to that, I'm sure you'll find a copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ around here somewhere," Remus said. "Maybe in the library."

"I think most of those books have rotted," Maia said, crinkling her nose.

"We can restore them," Remus said, eyeing the cheese-straws.

"Where's Sirius?" Maia asked curiously.

"He'll be along as soon as he smells food," Remus said, smiling. A long-haired shadow dropped down the stairs, as if to punctuate his sentence.

"Sausage?" someone murmured sleepily; Maia glanced over her shoulder to see Sirius, eyes closed, teetering sleepily where he stood, as if he had been drawn downstairs sleepwalking. Maia glanced at Remus, whose eyes twinkled. "You're up early," Sirius yawned, glancing at Maia as he sank into a chair at the table, and Remus chuckled as he poured Sirius a cup of tea; Maia cooked the two sausages she had left aside at Remus's suggestion, cut up some bread, and handed Sirius the bottle of brown sauce; his sleepy grin as he lifted a sausage-sarni to his lips made Maia chuckle. Something caught his eye by the sink, and Maia glanced around, jumping; a handsome owl was hovering by the half-moon window.

"That'll be the post," Remus said, hurrying over to the window, and the owl hopped inside.

"And the news," Sirius added, and Maia stared as another owl swooped into the kitchen, hopping on the deep windowsill cluttered with _her_ potted herbs and flowers, some of them edible.

"Merlin, where's the—"

"Red pot," Sirius said, and Remus shot Sirius a grin before darting to the little red pot tucked into the corner of the windowsill, from which Maia saw Remus take a little bronze coin, which he tucked into a little pouch on the second owl's leg before taking the newspaper; he detached the wad of papers from the first owl's leg, and they took off one after the other. Both chuckling softly, smiles reminiscent as Remus sat back down at the table, Maia just watched, as Remus separated the crosswords in the Entertainment Section from the back of the newspaper, handing it to Sirius, as Sirius licked brown sauce from his thumb and refilled Remus's teacup, Remus handing him the quill before Sirius brought his hand back. Watching, everything seemed so natural, a tradition they didn't even really seem to realise they were re-enacting. If Maia hadn't known they had been best-friends since they were eleven years old, if she hadn't known they had lived together once before, Maia would have found it funny how synchronised their movements were. Sirius noticed it first, and he chuckled long and softly, saying, "Just like old times." But there was a sad, wistful gleam to his eyes as he turned his eyes from Remus to Maia, who was kneading the dough for hot-cross buns.

"So what's all this food for?" he asked, smiling as his eyes turned hungry, gazing at the cooling sausage-rolls, cheese-straws and scones.

"You two both need fattening up," Maia said, smirking subtly, and Sirius chuckled as she swatted playfully at the hand he stretched out to take a still-hot savoury scone, "and Remus says there will probably be people stopping by every day to check in and deliver news. And if reading _The Hobbit_ taught me anything, it's to keep a fully-stocked pantry." Remus groaned, just as Sirius's eyes flew wide, beaming.

"I _knew_ you'd read it!" he declared. "Nobody but someone who's read Tolkien would call their home a 'Hobbit-hole'."

"Have you read Tolkien?"

"He wanted us to go searching for Smaug," Remus said drily, not looking up from the letters he had opened. Maia chuckled.

"Did you know they're bringing out the first instalment of _The Hobbit_ in the cinemas in December?" she asked, and Sirius's jaw dropped, his eyes turning a dazzling silver with sheer delight. Remus frowned bemusedly.

"Sorry, you'll have to forgive Remus; wizards don't have films and cinemas," Sirius said, and Maia glanced at him.

"They _don't_?" she asked, appalled.

"There used to be _one_ cinema, in Diagon Alley," Sirius said wistfully. "My first and _only_ job was serving popcorn and ripping tickets, but the owner was killed during the War." His features turned thoughtful for a moment.

"Well, they've already brought out all of the _Lord of the Rings_ films," Maia said, and Sirius practically bounced off his chair, eager to watch them.

"You'd need an entire day free to watch them all," Maia chuckled. "I've got the DVDs upstairs."

"DVDs?" Sirius frowned. "I thought it was…video-cassettes."

"Oh, those are old," Maia laughed, and tried to explain DVDs to Sirius, though she confessed that, "with modern technology, most people use it, even if they don't understand how it actually works. It took me ages to modify my TV and DVD-player, so they'll work on magic." Remus shot her a covert glance, but Sirius was all grins as he followed her upstairs, wanting a firsthand look at her collection of DVDs, and her television.

Only when Maia promised she would watch _The Fellowship of the Ring_ with Sirius one evening did Sirius agree to start cleaning that morning: taking turns to use the downstairs bathroom, they dressed, and Remus Apparated with Maia to the Hobbit-hole, long enough for her to feed her Bantams, collect their fresh eggs, and check the vegetable-garden for fresh pickings, watering everything before the sun got too hot, and Remus Apparated her back to Grimmauld Place. Sirius admitted them back inside Number Twelve, and they gathered in the kitchen where Maia put away the fresh vegetables and the collection of eighteen little Bantam eggs.

She tied her long, curling hair in a thick, messy plait and bound inside a handkerchief, like vintage housewives, wearing one of her fully-lined, handmade dresses—designed from patterns she had cut out herself, modelled after 1950s silhouettes—and bearing a handful of handkerchiefs to tie over their noses and mouths; Remus with his shirtsleeves pushed up past his elbows; and Sirius yawning, his hair freshly-shorn to his shoulders, wavy and unexpectedly handsome: Maia was right about his long hair making him look older and a lot thinner; with his hair cut short, he looked very young, and the more he laughed, the more handsome he became, though Remus muttered it might have something to do with the fact that Maia was intent on fattening him up, something Sirius had absolutely no aversion to whatsoever, considering he brought the tea-tray, laden with bacon and caraway scones and a pitcher of water mixed with strawberry and rhubarb cordials, garnished with crushed mint, some slices of lemon and a lot of ice, upstairs with them "just in case all this manual-labour leaves me light-headed".

Sirius's mood improved even more, despite the prospect of cleaning, when Maia produced her record-player. Tentatively, she held up an armful of her records. "Wanna listen to the King? _You_ look like Elvis fans…"

Shooting a nonverbal spell at the moth-eaten curtains in the hall so they didn't open, they scrubbed and mopped the hall, the stairs and the first-floor gallery, singing along and, in Sirius's case, shimmying a dance to Maia's old Elvis records, passed down through the family, making them laugh as they washed and polished the banisters and archways while Remus waxed the floors: magic was a marvel, though Sirius admitted he had never been very adept at cleaning spells because he had never really had cause to use them; he had been arrested at twenty-two. Remus had far more skill with scouring charms, and lightened the load by employing magic to scrub things out of reach, particularly the glass dome in the ceiling, which, when cleaned, shone sparkling light on everything it touched.

Remus almost had a heart-attack the first time he turned around to see Maia perched precariously on the outside window-ledge as she washed the tall windows, convinced, as Sirius had threatened his parents on many occasions when he was a teenager, she was about to jump. From then on Remus employed magic to scour the windows clean, and sand away the rust and peeling paint from the frames, leaving them completely clean for Maia to go at with a paintbrush.

Pausing for elevenses, which consisted of tea, warmed sausage-rolls, tomatoes roasted over toast and some goat's-cheese, and half a fresh Victoria sponge cake four inches high, oozing with raspberry jam and sweet icing, Sirius disappeared for a moment, and Remus, emptying his teacup, smiled at her.

"I'm glad to see you're not letting Sirius stew in self-pity," he said softly, elbow resting on his knee, refilling his teacup. He sighed; they had paused to sit in a patch of sun just below the open window on the first-floor gallery, and in the bright sunshine Remus looked far younger than Maia had thought he was. "He needs someone to encourage him to get out of bed every morning."

"And by encourage, do you mean _drag_?" Maia asked, and Remus chuckled.

"If it comes to it," he smiled warmly. He sighed, glancing at her briefly. "There will be times when I will have to spend time away from Grimmauld Place. I know you two will look after each other." Maia glanced at Remus. As they had cleaned, they had chatted, about anything Maia could think of to ask, about magic, about Hogwarts, and both Sirius and Remus had proved themselves to be very intelligent men, very articulate, and well-informed: their friendly banter coaxed a lot of stories about each other out of them as they cleaned, making Maia laugh, and the more she asked them about their time at Hogwarts, the more the two men laughed, and the happier and handsomer they seemed to become.

By the time lunch rolled around, Maia's arms, and her stomach, were aching; her arms, from scrubbing; her stomach, from laughing so much. It was the first time in a long while that Maia had laughed so richly, and she thought perhaps Sirius was consciously trying to make her laugh. Sirius polished off his bubble-and-squeak, cold-cuts and baked-beans with almost indecent enthusiasm, beating Maia by only seconds, and Remus produced a delicious triple-layer chocolate cake for them to partake of, with fresh berries dusted with sugar and black pepper, and a dollop of crème fraîche.

Sirius had fallen into a light doze, seated in the hot sun with a cup of tea while the plates washed themselves in the sink, his arms folded over his chest, slumped in his seat; his chin had just begun to touch his chest.

"I was thinking, earlier, that we should take you Diagon Alley to get you a wand," Remus said. "There's a twice-weekly market that I think would be something for you to see. There's one tomorrow."

Sirius started and blinked around blearily. "Did I doze off?"

"Yes," Remus smiled, amused. "I was just saying to Maia, we could go to Diagon Alley soon."

Blinking blearily, Sirius nodded. "Spoke to Dumbledore about that earlier; Maia will need a wand before she can access her family-vault. And I'd like to pick up some things from my vault."

"From…yours, Sirius, that's danger—"

"Moony, please don't finish that sentence," Sirius grimaced, heaving a sigh as he seemed to struggle to pull himself upright, the peace that had lightened his features darkening with something close to misery.

"What are you going to do, Sirius, waltz in as Padfoot and bark to be let into your vault?" Remus said; Maia glanced from him to Sirius, lost. Sirius sighed.

"I was going to give Maia the key, actually," he said heavily. "So I needn't go _inside_ Gringott's. I can stay out in Diagon Alley as Padfoot and not bring any attention to myself." Remus looked like he wanted to argue that point, but Maia being lost, she didn't follow the things that were going on unsaid between the two men. "Well, that sounds like a plan for our day tomorrow!"

"_Our_ day?" Remus frowned disapprovingly.

"I'm coming, and that's that," Sirius said sternly, and Remus sighed heavily.

"Fine. Maybe we can get you a collar while we're there," he said drily, looking disgruntled, and Sirius caught Maia's eye and winked. She smiled.

"Might help, actually," Sirius said thoughtfully. "People will see me wearing a collar and just assume I'm your pet." Remus sighed, glancing at Maia before rolling his eyes.

"Would you like an engraved tag, too?" he asked. "'_Flea-Bitten and Rabid; Needs Home_'."

"Takes one to know one, Moony," Sirius retorted idly. Remus seemed to be very good at resisting Sirius's ribbing, because he just rolled his eyes, sipped his tea. Sirius yawned. "I need a nap!"

When they had eaten their fill and the dishes and saucepans were cleaning themselves in the sudsy sink, Maia suggested they return to the cleaning, and Sirius hauled himself regretfully out of his seat in the sun; Maia's limbs ached from scrubbing, but she was determined to see this house fit for Sirius to enjoy living in.

"What do you need me to do?" Remus asked.

"There's a family of Jarveys in the library writing-table," Sirius answered. "Maia and I can tackle the Doxys in the dining-room."

"There should be a few bottles of Doxycide in the storage-room," Remus said. "I'll be back in a moment." And he returned, bearing a book across which a handsome man's face flashed a grin, gold lettering spelling out _Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests_.

"Lockhart! That old nancy, what the hell're you doing with this?" Sirius asked indignantly, tugging the book out of Remus's hands.

"He may have been a nancy, but it's a good book," Remus said, on a sigh. "Did you know he's had his memory completely removed?"

"Yeah, I think Ron Weasley might've mentioned it," Sirius said negligently, crinkling his nose with distaste at the photograph on the cover of the book and opening it to the index.

"He's in the permanent spell-damage ward at St Mungo's now," Remus said quietly. "I saw him when I went to visit Frank and Alice." The two men exchanged a solemn look.

"Poor devils," Sirius said, very quietly, and very sombrely. Maia wondered who Frank and Alice were. Sirius abandoned the book to Remus and disappeared into the storage-room; he reappeared bearing three bottles filled with black liquid, nozzle-sprays attached to the tops. He also bore several pairs of dragon-hide gloves, and grabbed several tea-towels from the oven door-handles. "There's no Doxy-venom antidote in the cupboard, so best not get bitten. I can't take anyone to St Mungo's."

"What's St Mungo's?"

"Wizards' hospital," Sirius smiled. "Most households will have books on home-healing, but for the really bad stuff, or for weird side-effects, you'd do best to go to St Mungo's."

"There are wizard doctors?" Maia asked curiously.

"Doctors? Those mad Muggles who hack people up? Merlin, no. Wizards have_ Healers_," Sirius said.

"Healers?"

"Yep. You need top marks in all of your exams, and then you have to apprentice at St Mungo's before you can be fully certified," Sirius said. "At least, that was the way of it back when we were looking at career-choice pamphlets. What was that, fifteen, sixteen years ago?"

"Mm," Remus said dispassionately; both men's shoulders slumped, and they looked decidedly weary, realising that they were nearing their mid-thirties—something Maia pointed out was a good thing; "Most people don't even get married and start families before your age".

"I suppose that's true," Sirius sighed. "Your parents and Harry's got together because of the war. Everyone knew their time might be cut short; they crammed everything in they could before the inevitable they dreaded happened."

Maia was curious to know why Sirius hadn't been married, or at least had a steady girlfriend before his arrest; from the way Remus ribbed him, Maia suspected Sirius had been a bit of a dish at Hogwarts, making his way through the female population one girl at a time. So how come Maia was the sole heir to the Black family? But she didn't ask; they had only met, after all… And if it had been a war, maybe something truly horrific had happened.

Remus disappeared into the library, from whence Maia heard high-pitched chattering and a constant stream of swearwords, and she and Sirius entered the dining-room. It was the only room, besides the massive drawing-room, that hadn't been aired out yet, Maia too disconcerted by the buzzing curtains yesterday.

But now, Sirius showed her the page in Gilderoy Lockhart's book dedicated to something called a Doxy, and she memorised the contents, and the elaborate drawing of the anatomy of the little fairy-like creature, and Sirius slammed the book down on the dining-table before giving Maia an arch smile; they knotted handkerchiefs over their mouths, tugged on pairs of dragon-hide gloves, positioned a bucket at the foot of each curtain, made sure the nozzles on the bottles were open, and started spraying quickly, mindful of the tip that as soon as they did, the Doxies would come at them.

Maia jumped; a full-grown Doxy soared out of the curtain after only a few seconds' spraying, four-armed, furry, with needle-sharp teeth and glossy beetle-wings. She blasted it full in the face with Doxycide, and it fell with a surprisingly solid _thunk_ to the floor. Two more swarmed out, and she sprayed away. Sirius made a game of counting how many he blitzed with the Doxycide compared to Maia, trying to outdo each other, Sirius throwing cushions from the dining-chairs at the curtains to anger the adult Doxies into flying out, and to dislodge the glossy black eggs now collected in another bucket. By the time Remus appeared, the high-pitched swearing silenced, the curtains hung limply, soaked with Doxycide; buckets of paralysed Doxies, another of their eggs, stood at the foot of the windows, which Maia battered open with Sirius's help, before tugging the curtains down to launder.

Mindful that Maia's foot had sunk through the upholstery of a chair in the library last night, Sirius decided, on a heartbeat's reflection, that stripping and reupholstering the chairs in the dining-room would be beneficial in the long-run, and he promptly started tearing the upholstery from the chairs, taking an extraordinary amount of pleasure in it. With Sirius, armed with a wand he had found in the bowels of the house—he _dearly_ wished for his own, which had been confiscated upon his capture—Maia grabbed a bin-bag, and after tearing up the threadbare carpet, they went through the contents of the handsome sideboard-cabinet: they threw away ruined Christmas crackers, a lot of mouldy lace doilies, but the tablecloths were all made of very fine fabric, hand-embroidered, and Maia took them downstairs to be laundered with the curtains.

Tearing up the carpet in the dining-room, they revealed another handsome parquet floor inlaid with a beautiful oval mosaic, and, Sirius shrinking and levitating the dining-table and the sideboard-cabinet out of the room, they swept, mopped and polished the floor before Maia turned to the table, dusting and polishing it. Deciding it time for afternoon-tea, they paused, sitting on the stairs, making their way through a pot of tea, as well as a selection of Florentines, loukoumades (Greek dough balls drenched in honey), rosewater-almond biscuits, fresh fruit and cake. Pausing for breath, muscles weary but exhilarated due to the sheer thrill of having company, listening to great music and eating delicious things, Maia helped Sirius and Remus refine a list of things they needed to purchase for the house, and Sirius encouraged Maia to think up colour-schemes and decorating styles for the rooms they had managed to strip. Sirius took great delight in the fact that he would be using money from the family that had disowned him for being a decent, liberal-minded, non-elitist Gryffindor and Order of the Phoenix warrior, to turn their house into "a holding for Muggle-loving, anti-Establishment, pro-reform, pseudo-neo _Untouchables_ non-Slytherins. Not to mention, home to blood-traitors, part-humans and secret love-children."

"Your uncle Alphard would find it funny," Remus said, after rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, Al had a good sense of humour," Sirius smiled lazily.

"What was he like?" Maia asked curiously. At any mention of members of Sirius's family, she seized on the topic; she had never known anything about her father beyond his name.

"Alphard? Well, he was a bit of an eccentric in the family, but never outwardly seen to dishonour the Black name, so he wasn't disowned, but we didn't see much of him," Sirius said, looking a little disgruntled. "He didn't get along with my mother. Most decent people didn't. But he was brilliant at parties, always a laugh. He gave me my first porno magazines, first records, gave me my first glass of cognac. And then hid me under the buffet table when I passed out because then I downed about three more on a completely empty stomach." Maia laughed. "Well, it was the holidays."

"He sounds like fun," Maia smiled.

"He was," Sirius grinned. "Shame he died when he did. Left me everything in his will. My mother's reaction was _fantastic_."

Remus asked to be excused from cleaning for the rest of the afternoon so he could work, the only reason Maia let him off: Sirius pouted, but with the sun scorching through the windows, the front-door Sirius insisted remain open as long as they were in the hall, slaving away—she found herself, and Sirius, singing along.

Maia returned from the kitchen, tidying everything up there after tea, armed with a dustpan and brush, a bucket of warm, sudsy water and a dishcloth, and with every drawer of the sideboard Sirius emptied of its contents—emerald-enamel napkin-rings that broke Maia's finger when she picked one out of its velvet lining in a polished box; cloth napkins that had been made a nest out of; serpent-stemmed wine-glasses—Maia swept and then washed it, arranging the drawers in the sun beneath the open library windows, and the ones either side of the front-door: placing soft dishtowels on the dining-table, Maia helped Sirius unload the contents, all of which needed a serious polish; all of the fine silver cutlery and a punch-bowl; several very finely-embossed silver trays; a dainty little Moroccan silver teapot, sugar-bowl, tea-strainer and sugar-tongs that seized Sirius's nose before he tapped them with his wand and they fell, with a clatter, to the floor; a very delicate, scalloped-edged three-tiered treat-stand; some candlestick holders and—"hey, these are Greek kylixes!" Maia said, smiling, unexplainably delighted that she remembered the correct term for a drinking-cup from her Classical Civilisation class as she opened a heavy box lined with emerald velvet that contained several embossed two-handled cups.

"How do you know that?" Sirius chuckled, arranging a set of discoloured tankards on the table.

"I took Classical Civilisation at sixth-form," Maia said, and began to tell Sirius about her lessons in Greek sculpture, architecture and theatre. The names of the characters of the ancient Theban plays brought a smile to Sirius's lips, and he explained that each of the names used amongst Black family descendents were chosen from the names of stars, "…and nearly all the firstborn sons are named Sirius. It means the 'dog-star'. The brightest star in the Canis Major constellation. Regulus is the brightest star in the Leo constellation, which is ironic; the lion is the symbol for Gryffindor. And Maia… Maia is one of the Pleiades. Reportedly the eldest," Sirius said, shooting her a smile. His expression turned thoughtful, not seeing the serpent-stemmed wine-glass he was holding. "That's funny…"

"What is?" Maia asked curiously.

"Well, the Pleiades were pursued by Orion, the hunter," Sirius said, "so Zeus preserved them as stars. My father's name was Orion. It's just ironic, that you're named Maia, and Regulus kept you secret from our parents, that's all… What's your middle-name, by the way? Do you have one?"

"Yes," Maia said, flushing. She was rather embarrassed about her middle-name, although _Casino Royale_ and the stunning Eva Green had done wonders for the coolness factor.

"Well, come on, out with it, what is it?" Sirius grinned. "It can't be worse than Tonks's name."

"Well, no, it's not," Maia conceded. "It's Vesper." Sirius nodded, smiling.

"Another family-name. You'll see on the family-tree there are lots of Hespers, Hesperas, and Vespers," he said.

"Family tree?"

"In the drawing-room," Sirius sighed. "There's a huge tapestry that's been handed down since the Middle-Ages."

"The Middle-Ages?" Maia gawped; her History lessons at school gave her a vague understanding of the significance; that meant the time-period between the 5th and 15th centuries!

"Yup. The family officially dates from about 982 A.D.," Sirius said, rolling his eyes, "which, to my parents, implied you were next to royalty! Anyone decent ever born to the family was blasted off the tapestry, though. I'm not on there. Neither's Andromeda, so Tonks won't be there either… I wonder if you're on there. It's enchanted to record every Black's birth and death, and marriage."

"I don't know if my parents were married," Maia said, frowning thoughtfully. She had never thought to ask.

"No," Sirius frowned thoughtfully. He shot a devilish grin at the moth-eaten curtains in the hall. "Wait till Mum's portrait gets a load of that. Her precious darling had a child out of wedlock and let her be raised in the Muggle world! Trust Regulus. I feel so _upstaged_." He looked disgruntled, pouting.

"Well, you still have the opportunity to outdo him," Maia smiled, and Sirius quirked an eyebrow thoughtfully. He glanced at the serpent-stemmed wine-glass in his hand and chucked it into the bin-bag; with chinkling, musical notes, the rest of the glasses were thrown in after it, the sound of crunching, breaking glass stifled when a long table-runner that had served as a nest for mice was added to the bin.

"You know, I spent my entire childhood wanting to sack this house," Sirius said. "Wanted to strip it bare and paint it the Gryffindor colours."

"What's Gryffindor?" Maia asked.

"I keep forgetting how little you know about our world!" Sirius exclaimed. "Gryffindor was my House at school. Moony's too; us and James shared a dormitory. There are four Houses; everyone says their own is the best, but you're a Gryffindor if your heart is brave and true." And he was off, explaining about the founding of Hogwarts, the famous witches and wizards whose names had become immortalised in the naming of their Houses, each of which had their own characteristics and rivalries and alliances—mostly against Slytherin, of which all Blacks but Sirius had been members—and telling her about practical jokes he, Remus and his best-friend, James Potter, Harry's father, had committed against the Slytherin House during their years at Hogwarts. It was evident in every word that Sirius had loved his best-friend James more than life itself—more than _his_ life, Maia realised, remembering what Sirius had told her of the night the Potters had been murdered.

Remus had murmured to her earlier that, due to the Potters' deaths, and the way Sirius perceived it all to be his fault, he believed Sirius might have become a little unhinged at the sight of James and Lily's dead bodies: that couldn't have been helped by twelve years in prison, Maia thought, especially the prison Sirius had described. When she had asked Remus if Azkaban was truly as bad as Sirius had described, he had said no; it was far, far worse. 'Indescribable' was Remus's exact word for it, and both men shared the conviction that they never wanted Maia to experience what Sirius had gone through.

"You should really write these stories down," she said, and Sirius glanced at her curiously. "My mother wrote stories down, about her brother and sisters…to go along with the photographs and treasures. Otherwise I would never have known anything about them. Memories are too precious to lose." Sirius grunted: realising what she had said—telling a man whose every happy memory had been sapped from him the last decade and a half—she blushed, but Sirius looked thoughtful as he told her more stories that made her stomach ache with laughing, tears streaming down her face from mirth.

After stripping, scrubbing and polishing the first-floor gallery and corridors, they started on the bedrooms: it was decided that the drawing-room was too large a job to start so late in the afternoon, and anyway, the bedrooms were of far greater importance. Sirius would use magic to detect any inhuman _presences_—teaching Maia the spell even though she had no wand to practice it with—and would consult Remus's _Household Pests_ book for how to get rid of them, though he checked it less and less frequently the more they worked and they got to knowing what types of creatures were in any particular room just by the evidence they left behind of their presence. Sirius used the same spell to scrub the windows as Remus had until they sparkled, stripping the window-frames of their paint both inside and outside the house so Maia could go round later with a paintbrush: Sirius started singing along to Elvis as he scrubbed the bare floor, following up with wax as Maia treated the marble fireplaces with a very soft cloth and the cleanser she had found in the kitchen supply-cupboard, and polished the engraved, inlaid mantelpieces. More stacks of portraits, like the ones she had collected yesterday from the corridors, were disposed of by Sirius, whom Remus had to convince _not_ to set a pyre in the front hall to burn them.

Furniture was stripped of moulded, gnawed upholstery; anything salvageable was sent downstairs to be laundered and recycled: With each bedroom they stripped and cleaned, Sirius went through dressing-tables, writing-desks and bedside-cabinets, armed with dragon-hide gloves and bin-bags, explaining the contents of some of the jars to Maia with their various properties, like Bulbadox Powder. Anything resembling a serpent, or anything that fought back, was thrown unceremoniously into the bin, though Sirius told Maia to save anything she liked the look of. By the time they staggered, exhausted, out of the last bedroom on the first-floor, Maia carried a bed-sheet laden with a selection of antiques and trinkets to shine up, while a Singer sewing-table rested in the corridor ready to be scrubbed clean and polished, just as a very pretty backgammon table with a collection of mother-of-pearl chips in different hues and shapes waited to be relined.

Exhausted, smelling of All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover and polish, they collapsed downstairs, Maia having declared it was "Pimms o'clock!" and she produced a sweating jug of Pimms filled with chunks of fruit, cucumber and mint, and they sat, with chairs from the kitchen, on the front-stoop, soaking up the sun. They were dozing there when the first of the Order members arrived for the evening's meeting, and retreated inside once they had drunk their Pimms.

They had completely raided the spare bedrooms on the first floor and two on the second—the house was so much larger than Maia had originally expected from outside—completely stripping them of anything Sirius thought was unsavoury. She came downstairs into the kitchen with Sirius, Remus, Sturgis Podmore and Emmeline Vance, mostly to help set out food and drinks in the kitchen for anyone who wanted them, but also to say hello to the witches and wizards she had met yesterday, and have another glass of Pimms and some cake. When she arrived, Mrs Weasley thoroughly approved of what Sirius called Maia "enslaving" him and Remus into scouring the house: "I barely recognised the hall," Mrs Weasley said approvingly. "I told you, Sirius, a little elbow-grease and some All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover, we'll have this place shined up like a new galleon."

"Yes, well, when I find my father's old belt, I shall hand it over to Maia so she may whip my hide raw if I slack off," Sirius said, patting Maia's knee as he helped himself to more cake, though his expression turned stormy for the briefest instant, and Maia wondered why.

"I'll bet Professor McGonagall wished she could have done the same," Remus said, and Sirius barked a laugh: Remus had to explain who Professor McGonagall was, the teacher of Transfiguration at Hogwarts, and just why she would have wished to lash Sirius for laziness; he was an incredibly talented student but, as Maia had heard from his stories of the 'Marauders', as he and his friends called themselves, prone to practical-jokes of every shape, form and magnitude.

The other thing Mrs Weasley approved of: the way Maia kept her kitchen, and what Maia described as the "Hobbit diet" she had put Sirius and Remus on, "to fatten them up, you know."

"Little and often," Mrs Weasley nodded approvingly. "Just like with little babies."

"Sirius complains like one when I make him scrub the walls," Maia smirked, and Sirius shot her a look, then grinned wolfishly, popping the last of a second slice of Victoria sponge with all the trimmings (fresh cream, lovely red strawberries, dustings of icing-sugar) in his mouth, licking icing-sugar from his fingers. The house, always so quiet during the day—despite Maia's record-player; Sirius's predilection for punk and old-school 60s rock; and Sirius's grumbling—seemed filled to bursting when the working day ended, and Order members poured in.

She met the two new members Tonks and Kingsley had managed to recruit, and another whom Mrs Weasley didn't seem at all to approve of: the two younger men, one in scarlet robes with his hair gathered in a very long ponytail; and another with long blonde hair that didn't know whether it was dreadlocked, berserker-braided or uncombed, were named respectively Jethro Lothaire Alexander and Til Hughes, who had very dark brown eyes, unbelievably warm, but when he moved it was with the lethal grace and purpose of a predator. Lothaire, as he liked to be known, was in the Auror Office with Tonks and Kingsley; Til, the Department of Mysteries, something called an 'Unspeakable', and asking Til what his job was like was like asking an MI6 employee what their job entailed. But he and Lothaire, surprised by Maia's unconventional upbringing, talked about how they had come to be in their current employment, and what other jobs they had taken in the past. The lump of rags with doleful, bloodshot eyes was a thief named Mundungus Fletcher, or 'Dung', the same wizard Tonks had had to get out of a scrape yesterday, and to whom Dung was extremely grateful for it.

Maia, monopolised by Tonks last night, was approached by Ailith, who was curious to know a pureblood witch raised in the Muggle world: they talked about how she and Tonks had first met, at a gig held by a wizard band called _Patchwork Snidget Complex_, the summer before Tonks' seventh-year at Hogwarts. Tonks, clumsy and vivacious, and Ailith, so graceful and gentle, made a unique pair, but they both had an incurable sense of humour and an undying love for Wizard rock, and getting into a conversation about Ailith's camera, again which she wore slung across her front, Maia confessed that she had a love of photography, and Ailith told her all about special kinds of paper that only became light-sensitive at the use of a specific charm, and the potions Maia could use to make her photographs move.

Chatting with Ailith, and Tonks—who had somehow managed to break her nose tripping over something in the bare hall, mended expertly by a chuckling Mrs Weasley—about Wizard music, and fashion, Bill Weasley adding his opinions on the latter and arguing with Tonks on the former, by the time the last of the expected members of the Order arrived for the evening meeting, Maia was ushered out of the room by a smiling Ailith, and she was left to her own devices.

She decided to head back upstairs to the second-storey, where they had begun going through the rooms: The house was arranged such that it didn't make _any_ sense whatsoever; studies were to be found on the fourth-storey, while the seventh seemed to have the best bathroom, and one could only reach the attics by a staircase on the fifth-storey: rooms dedicated to books, or potions supplies, or to family heirlooms, or the silver cupboard, were found on different levels of the house, never with any sense of true organisation or thought to ease of access.

Armed with Remus's book on household pests, Maia scoured everything she could, collecting in cages Remus had Conjured earlier for such purposes, mice; rats; funny, custard-coloured balls of fluff that hummed happily; spiders the size of her palm and a family of hedgehog-like creatures that had taken lodgings in a hidden linen-cupboard, which Bill Weasley, coming upstairs to bring her a fresh glass of Pimms and a fairy-cake (Mrs Weasley having sent him up), pointed out when he offered the little creatures a dish of milk, were actually a family of Knarls.

Bill suggested Maia source a copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_, as well as a copy of _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_, the better to recognise what she was dealing with when she discovered a cluster of Puffskeins—the custard-coloured balls of fluff, which Bill said his brother Ron had once favoured as pets, and suggested she keep rather than asking Remus to dispose of them, as she would the mice, rats and spiders—or a strange, pink fungus-like creature she needed a special fungicide to kill the infestation, and which had spread to an _entire_ linen-cupboard.

Remus had suggested she write down the location of each infestation she couldn't tackle, and what they needed to remove it. While she scrubbed, she wondered…while she was curious about every aspect of magic, particularly the British Wizarding culture, she knew so little about it in general that she knew she would understand very little of anything she did pick up eavesdropping on the meetings. She knew she didn't truly understand the weight of the threat that was Lord Voldemort's latest attempt at return, though she was beginning to think he was some sort of Wizarding Sauron, and she began to realise, with a shiver, that Lord Voldemort rising again would have been like Hitler returning to power—only far more terrible, if that was possible.

Yesterday evening, and earlier today, Maia had overheard conversations before meetings had officially started, and Sirius had told her things that the public knew, but didn't connect with the Order: but she had picked up that several of the Order members had "guard duty"; that Remus was going to go "underground" in a few days' time to liaise with a particular group of wizards; Bill Weasley worked with goblins at the Wizard bank and was trying to liaise with them; Tonks, Kingsley and Ailith were quietly going about trying to bring in more members who understood the severity of Lord Voldemort's latest attempt at return, and didn't believe the tripe that Ailith, an employee of the _Daily Prophet_ newspaper, was trying to stop her editor, Barnabus Cuffe, from publishing. Having read the Prophet during their elevenses break, Maia had read that most articles were thinly-veiled attacks on Professor Dumbledore's capability, the credibility of Harry Potter, and the dangers of half-humans and the measures wizards needed to take against them to protect themselves.

Leaving the infested linen-cupboard alone, Maia entered another room on the second-storey: she kept wondering who had decided which rooms featured which furniture, but she couldn't wrap her head around anyone putting a grand-piano in a second-storey room between a bathroom, a linen-closet and a spare bedroom.

Being a music-lover, and having her certifications as a concert-level pianist and violinist, all thanks to Diane, Maia set down her glass and eyed the piano: it seriously needed a dust and polish, and the candelabrum sitting atop it had dribbled wax onto the wood, now covered with at least an inch of dust. She lifted the lid over the keys, which were revealed to be oddly pristine compared to everything else in the room: having removed the curtains and kicked the windows open, the sun shone hotly on the black and white keys. Removing the ancient-looking cushion on the bench, Maia sat down, wanting to test to see if the piano was still in tune. Tinkling her fingers over the keys, she grimaced: It was out of tune in a very bad way. Her great-aunt had long since taught Maia how to tune a piano by ear, possessing two of their own in their little Hobbit-hole, though neither as fine as this grand-piano.

Smiling to herself, she sipped her Pimms, then opened the back of the piano to access the tuning-pins.

Out burst, not a family of mice, or a Puffskein, or a Doxy. In the very hottest part of the day, ice seeped through her, and a tall figure shrouded in a tattered cloak towered to the ceiling, its face completely hidden, but Maia saw, for one brief second, a glistening, grey, scabbed hand. The blistering day had suddenly turned piercingly, bitingly cold, total darkness descending as quickly as the thing had appeared; the fine hairs at the back of her neck stood up, and goose-bumps prickled all over her arms. And then…it started to breathe, the thing, drawing long, hoarse, rattling breaths. Ice penetrated her heart, her lungs, seized everything in its unforgiving grip, she was drowning in the cold, terrified, and she could see…_Diane_… Another rattling breath, she could hear… a young man's heartbroken voice, choked with emotion, was he crying? "_My little baby star! I love you so, so much, poppet… One day, you'll know. And I hope you can forgive me… But _you_ are worth dying for…my little star. Daddy loves you…_"

She sank further into the icy darkness, where anarchy reined, a lovely drawing-room packed with people—beautiful young women in glittering dresses; two handsome men who looked alike despite the age difference—at the elder man's bellow, shouting a curse at the door that slammed shut, something ramming it from the outside, red light blasting around the edges of the door-frame, the younger man with astonishingly sapphire eyes grabbed her under the arms as easily as a ragdoll, dumping her hastily into a blanket-box, his features stark, his face bloodless, his curls shining gold as he forced the lid closed on her; the sound of petrified screams, the hasty shouts of women's curses, light exploding in the sliver where the lid of the blanket-box didn't sit right, then an orchestra of shouts, curses, and the most horrifying, pain-drenched, prolonged screams, whimpers of pain; deep voices, thick and gurgling, issuing their last curses, trying to protect those still untouched, whimpering from pain—their piercing screams made her shudder, hidden in her soft little box, terrified, tears streaming down her face. A low, evil laugh; the sickening sound of something heavy slapping on a wet surface; and then…nothing. For a long time. Nothing, and then, a petrified shout; her name, over and over again, in a deep voice: the sound of running feet, doors opening and closing: sounds of movement close at hand, a staggered step, the sound of someone trying not to vomit: the sound of high-heels coming close: a deep voice, shaky and throaty, grief-stricken and horrified, startled; "_No—Balian! Don't come—!_" A horrified gasp, a _thump_, and the male voice trying to revive 'Balian'. The voice started again, moaning Maia's name, but she was too tired, and too terrified, to answer, couldn't see because something was stinging her eyes, and she had her thumb in her mouth. Light sparkled suddenly, and she squinted, squirming, vivid blue eyes splashing tears on her face as a choked cry of relief escaped a beautiful woman's lips; Maia was wrenched out of the blanket-box, encased in familiar arms, her _mother's_ arms, her fragrant, curling blonde hair creating a shimmering curtain of gold around Maia as she rocked in her mother's arms, quiet as her mother kissed every part of her she could, squeezing her tight, as if she never wanted to let go.

"Is she hurt, Balian?" the deep male voice asked, close at hand, so close Maia could feel him encircling both her and her mother in a tight, shaky embrace.

"She's completely untouched," Balian, her mother, choked tearfully, and fragrant blonde hair tickled Maia's cheek as she sucked her thumb, resting her head against her mother's chest, her mother looking down beside them. Maia peeked, tired and bleary-eyed, but the sapphire-eyed man who had grabbed her and hidden her in the blanket-box gazed back…eyes wide, glassy…something red was shining all over him… Maia reached out a tiny little hand to pet his cheek, "Wack up, Bertie". She wanted Uncle Bertie to play with her. The man with Balian scooped Maia up, kissing her many times as her mother sobbed, and, tucking Maia against his front, her face pressed to his chest, standing on unsteady legs, he hefted Balian off the floor, keeping his hand over Maia's eyes as he picked his way out of the room, guiding her sobbing mother…

Everything went dark, and Maia descended further into that abyss, thoughts given over to peace.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: What do you think? Please review. And please visit my profile to vote whether Maia should go out with Fred or George.


	5. Chapter 05

**A.N.**: A revised version of this story, I've kind of fine-tuned things that didn't quite fit...and distracted myself from the burgeoning paranoia and hysteria that threaten to overwhelm me at the thought of my dissertation due in less than three weeks!

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><p><strong>Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_05_

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><p>"Maia," a hoarse voice said urgently, and she was aware of someone shaking her. Roused into consciousness, Maia moaned and resisted, feeling as if she had come down with a bad case of the flu. She was shuddering with cold, her entire body tensed up, muscles sore, and she was aware that she was curled up on the floor in a tight ball; but it was blistering-hot, and humid, and the light blinded her eyes as she peeked them open, her sight bleary from the tears that burned her cheeks.<p>

"Maia," the same hoarse voice repeated, and she jumped, recognising it, though it seemed older now, more mature; the man with Balian, her _mother_. She felt herself being gently pulled into a sitting-position, someone tucking her hair away from her face as something soft daubed at the tears burning her cheeks like acid, and she tried to look around, wondering where she was… Raising a shaking hand, she wiped away the tears clouding her eyes, and looked around her with glazed eyes: an old room; grubby wallpaper; threadbare carpet; glass-fronted cabinets stuffed with sheet-music; musical-instruments; a grand-piano… She became aware of a dark-haired figure propping her upright; Sirius, looking harrowed, his cheeks hollow, silvery eyes haunted and stormy.

"What happened?" she whispered, unsurprised to hear her voice was hoarse and sounded like she had a cold.

"You stumbled upon a Boggart," Sirius said anxiously. "Boggarts masquerade as whatever you fear the most." His voice turned hoarse, shaking, as he added, "Yours took the form of a Dementor."

A Dementor, she thought, just managing to process thought as she tried not to remember what she had seen, inside her head, a vision of the past long-buried in her mind. A Dementor, the guards of the prison Sirius had been locked in, the Dementors that made her shiver every time she thought about them, even just Sirius's description. A Dementor that had forced her to remember the sound of her father crying as he said goodbye for the last time; to see her mother…and the handsome young uncle she'd thought she had _no_ memory of, let alone…

She gazed at Sirius. Her uncle. Another family-member she had not even realised she had, let alone couldn't remember. Her uncle who had lived, for twelve years, in a prison surrounded by those creatures. Her eyes burning, he must have seen her lip trembling, because he tucked her head under his chin, gently stroking her hair and rubbing her back comfortingly.

"You're alright," he said softly, squeezing her. After a moment, he helped her to her feet. "Come. Let's get some chocolate in you." And, Maia's eyes burning, her lip trembling as she recalled how the man in her memory had lifted her into his arms, her mother off the floor, she stumbled out of the music-room.

Weak and shaky, she stumbled several times, always on the verge of more tears, but Sirius supported her downstairs, and the kitchen was a riot of laughter, chinking glasses and dazzling sunshine

"Everything alright, dear?" Mrs Weasley asked, smiling across the room; her smile faded instantly at the sight of Maia: Sirius clapped a hand on Moody's shoulder, saying, "Thanks for the warning. Collapsed just as I got to her."

"What happened?" Mrs Weasley asked, her demeanour utterly different now that anxiousness had taken over, her eyes widening as she looked at Maia, sitting huddled in her seat, staring unseeingly at the tabletop.

"She found a Boggart," Sirius said darkly, and several people sitting around the table murmured and made consoling noises. "It had taken the form of a Dementor." Maia shuddered, and she wasn't the only one; Sirius reached for a tin on the mantelpiece, while Remus disappeared into a pantry, retrieving a jar of drinking chocolate. Mrs Weasley approached Maia, her expression so kind and motherly that Maia burst into tears.

"I heard his voice!" she cried, a Mrs Weasley gathered Maia up in her arms. "And I saw—I saw my _mummy_—and uncle _Bertie_!" Choking a sob, her lip trembled as she cried, "I didn't know I could remember the Tragedy!"

With a resounding clatter, seemingly jumping out of his skin, Sirius dropped the tin, scattering bars of chocolate over the tiled floor. He was staring at Maia with wide, horrified eyes, his cheeks hollow again, utterly pale. Everyone else at the table, alarmed and sympathetic to Maia's first exposure to a Boggart and a Dementor at the same time, turned pale, eyes widening. Mr Diggle looked like he was going to burst into tears too, and stately Emmeline Vance, looking appalled and grief-stricken, whispered softly, "You're Balian's little baby."

"Sirius," Mrs Weasley said, sounding like she had a head-cold, "pick up that chocolate." Sirius scooped up a handful of bars, and handed one to Mrs Weasley with a shaking hand, who unwrapped it and handed it to Maia. "There you are, dear, eat the lot of that up. It'll do you good." Blindly, Maia accepted whatever was offered, and ate it mechanically. Chocolate. Just a bite, and she felt all of her muscles relax, warmth spreading to her fingers and toes, chasing away the cold. Remus made her a glass of frothy hot-chocolate, Mrs Weasley forcing her to drain it after finishing the last of the bar of chocolate—the best Maia had ever tasted—and gradually, the adults who were remaining for dinner got back to talking and laughing, but Maia saw several of them cast anxious, wide-eyed glances at her.

Uncertain about why they kept looking at her with horrified, mournful glances, Maia excused herself, smiling weakly at Ailith and Tonks as she passed them, both looking worried; she recovered her sweating glass of Pimms from the music-room—the top of the piano was now propped up, the inside empty but for the strings she still needed to tune: she did, seeing no point in leaving the job she had begun unfinished, and testing the keys after tuning it, her mind went to Diane.

She trailed upstairs, avoiding the grandfather-clock, and entered her new bedroom. The windows had been open all day, no longer with any curtains to block the strong rays that threatened a drought, promising great weather for the Olympics, and it was blisteringly, blissfully hot in her room, the sun making everything glow. The second of the trunks Professor Dumbledore had filled had been brought up by Remus, and it was from it that Maia went in search of something very precious to her. An incredibly beautiful sewing-box, it had belonged to Diane, and there was not an evening in Maia's life where she couldn't remember the upholstered lid being opened, the firelight shining off the mother-of-pearl handled tools, while the sorrowful, exquisitely beautiful piece of music "The Swan" from _Carnival of the Animals_ played from a hidden music-box. As a very little girl, Diane used to curl Maia up in her lap, her expressive fingers, long and white, embracing her, and they would close their eyes and just _listen_…

As she got older, Maia would prepare cakes and treats, and if Diane, the naughty old girl, hadn't sourced them out while Maia was at school and devoured them, they would each have a treat after dinner, sitting before the fire in their armchairs, propped up against hand-embroidered cushions, draped with handmade blankets and quilts, and Diane would open the sewing-box, and they would listen, sipping their tea. The swan's last song was always its most beautiful; Maia had known Diane in the last phase of her incredibly long life, had had the privilege of taking care of the mercurial, naughty old girl with her eccentricities and wells of knowledge. She had raised Maia to be exactly who she was, had passed on the traditions of their family, because Diane was the only one who had known, and now Maia was the only one left. Everything Maia was able to do, she was because Diane had taught her.

And now Diane was gone.

Maia gathered her vintage red doll's pram from the trunk full of her own belongings, and the little enamelled toy-trunk in which all of the handmade clothes Diane and others had contributed to Dolly's wardrobe were kept. She found Dolly, and sat on the polished floor of the empty bedroom, carefully setting Diane's sewing-box on the floor, and lifted the lid. "The Swan" started playing, and Maia closed her eyes, Dolly in her lap, fiddling with the little porcelain hand, just listening, trying not to think of the screams but wanting to see her mother's face, the face of her uncle Bertie… The exquisite music echoed through the empty, dismal corridors…

Gradually, wiping her face on the magic handkerchief that wasn't working on her, Maia climbed off the floor, searching the trunks; she brought out _her_ armchair, still laden with handmade blankets, quilts and a comfy feather cushion she had embroidered with a scene of the meadow from the front-door of the Hobbit-hole. She set the armchair in front of the huge open window, bringing out her tiny footstool, a stack of very glossy magazines she had yet to read, her variety of sewing-boxes, set the glass of Pimm's on the windowsill and propped her ankles up, taking out her knitting, a magazine in her lap. Diane had instructed her in music, in astronomy, in poetry and cosmology, and languages; she had also ensured Maia could knit, crochet, make lace, embroider exquisitely, quilt, and make her own clothes from patterns she created herself.

A very ancient lady, Diane hadn't been able to run around the meadows looking after Maia, therefore her childhood activities before starting school (for "socialisation", Diane had said) had been indoors, and she could still remember, as a very little girl, sitting on the embroidered footstool, tucked right up beside Diane's legs, their hands busy with projects as the fire crackled, the record-player on, the scent of a fresh Victoria sponge cooling in the kitchen.

When she had cast off on her knitting, she got out her largest, fold-out sewing-box, beautifully hand-painted, and brought out her latest and greatest sewing project. Eighteen months ago, her finished GCSE Art coursework had comprised of a collection of exquisite watercolour paintings she had done of her favourite fairytales, except she had given them her own flavour. Having the benefit of world-travel at a young age, Maia had grown up with diverse language skills and an appreciation of—almost an idolatry for—foreign cultures. In her paintings, she had strayed often quite far from the traditional depiction of fairytale characters, placing them often far outside the bounds of Western "civilisation", giving the families multiple ethnicities—she had painted lilac-eyed, silver-blonde _Thumbelina_'s little fairy husband as a handsome black man with olive-green eyes; the mother of _Hansel and Gretel_ was of Native-American descent, having married a German immigrant. Her _Cinderella_ was of mixed English and Malayan descent, in the 1880s, her father a fabulously successful merchant who had fallen in love with a native on his trade journeys; her stepsisters weren't ugly but spoiled, incredibly beautiful with rosy lips, shining copper and auburn hair, elegant noses and eyes like sapphires. She had set _The Little Mermaid_ in ancient Greece, gave her white-blonde hair and sea-green eyes; her sisters had hair glowing with phosphorescence in the moonlight, the silky locks strung with pearls and little shells, with coral-pink lips and flashing silver tails. She had made _Snow White_ of Asian descent, (the product of an arranged marriage between kingdoms), her stepmother a flawless woman of ebony skin, silky black hair and chocolate-brown eyes, draped in rose-gold and peacock-blue; and the silent princess, borne away on a carpet during a starry midnight by swans with silver circlets in _The Wild Swans_, was a breathtaking cinnamon-skinned, violet-eyed golden-blonde with two gold-bound plaits to her knees and a heavy crown of gold decorated by a wreath of little thistles, forget-me-nots and lily-of-the-valley, her silk gown inspired by Sybilla's orangey gown in _Kingdom of Heaven_, borne over a meadow of misty thistles in which the olive-skinned, cornflower-eyed fairy Queen holds court.

Her _Twelve Dancing Princesses_ had different mothers, each of whom were of different descent, each of the twelve daughters strikingly-beautiful in their own unique ways, with hair ranging from shining ebony to ethereal silver-blonde, eyes lilac, celery-green, twinkling black, cinnamon or sapphire, their complexions ranging from shining mahogany, soft cocoa, to dusted with dark freckles, or with rosy cheeks, pretty honey-gold, or rich olive. Some had voluminous curly hair, some wore theirs short to their shoulders with a simple ribbon, or a high hairstyle, some had sheets of shining straight locks, some had gently waving locks threaded with jewels, some wore their hair in buns, or even a ponytail had made it into one of her characters. They lived in a staggeringly beautiful palace modelled after the Alhambra Palace, full of silks, roses, shining green leaves, exquisite treasures, incense and beautiful, exotic things.

She had created ethnic heroines, chivalrous princes of not only traditional Western measures of handsomeness; she had taken everything that she had discovered as beautiful in the world, and combined it with the stunning scenery she had enjoyed firsthand all over the world, cultural diversity, decadent colours, mixtures of different historical costumes, and each of her watercolours featured appropriate cuisine.

She had always been inspired by turn-of-the-century watercolour illustrators, like Edmund Dulac, and she had developed her own style, inspired by Edmund Dulac, mingled with Trina Schart-Hyman's exquisite expressions, drawing on the voyeurism of Cecily Brown and the grungy opulence of Marilyn Minter…entranced by the photographs of her mother's siblings, Maia had worked their likenesses—in childhood, and in their early-adulthood—into her watercolours, specifically her _Twelve Dancing Princesses_ paintings, as four of the princesses, and one of the suitors, even putting one of the sisters as a mermaid in _The Little Mermaid_, and she had painted ancient, mesmerising Diane with her incredibly lined face that crinkled in warm smiles, her luminous eyes and expressive, long-fingered hands, as the fairy-godmother in _Cinderella_.

She had adored her GCSE Art coursework project; her teachers thought she should publish the illustrations, as there were few children's fairytale-books with artwork quite as extraordinary as Maia's, and her illustrations had led her to another project. She had continued to paint more and more scenes for the various fairytales she had created characters and scenes for, discovering amongst Diane's library collections of obscure fairytales, and had continued to paint. She had chosen one of her favourite watercolours and was turning it into a quilt filled with exquisite details.

She had chosen the scene of the Little Mermaid, gathering up the hem of her snowy-white chiton, meeting her sisters, beautiful sirens with eyes the colour of the sea after a storm, at dusk at the water's edge; the Little Mermaid was a white-blonde beauty, her head crowned with laurels limned by starlight, a necklace of pointed pearls shining at her throat, while her sisters, their heads and torsos emerging from the water, glowed phosphorescently, draped in pearls and golden jewellery looted from shipwrecks.

Maia had pieced each mermaid together with strips of silk in tiny appliqué, and was in the midst of finishing the Little Mermaid's white-blonde hair, sewing clear glass and _tiny_ pearl seed-beads to the outer hems with silver thread to make her hair appear to shine and sparkle, the golden laurels picked out in silk embroidered with gold thread. This was the last piece she needed to sew to the rest of the quilt, before she could trim it with the hand-embroidered border she had created, and line it. It was fiddly work that required a lot of concentration, and in days past she had used it to distract her from having to think about Diane.

With the addition of the last tiny bead, Maia brought out the rest of the quilt, pieced together and appliquéd with six mermaids radiant in the starlight, and she carefully appliquéd the Little Mermaid's head to the rest of the quilt. It needed hemming, with the border, and lining, but after several months' exquisitely-hard labour, the details were finished!

She spread the quilt on the clean floor, and sat gazing at it, finally complete. The sunlight picked up the tiny beads and threads, making everything shimmer and glitter the way she had wanted it to.

Diane used to say that idle hands were the devil's workshop: when she had finished reading her magazine, she folded the quilt up and set it carefully out of the way, and turned to the dresser and tables Sirius had left in the bedroom, claiming they were free of occupants. She found her dragon-hide gloves and went to the dresser, tentatively opening the first drawer. She couldn't help wonder…how should she have banished that Boggart? Was everyone so susceptible? She had _collapsed_—how embarrassing! Was that normal?

And what had she been forced to remember? Her mother's face; her father's voice; the scent of her mother's hair; the incredible blue eyes of the man she had thought she'd only ever seen in photographs, worked into her paintings as a handsome suitor to beautiful princesses. Why had she been so certain he was her uncle? How had the Boggart, posing as a Dementor, forced her to relive that memory as if she had just witnessed it?

And why was she so sure it was a younger Sirius who had hauled both Maia and her mother out of that drawing-room?

Why had everyone downstairs been so shocked to hear that she was Balian's daughter?

What had happened to her?

Coming to live with Sirius had been about…coming to live with her uncle. So she could go to Hogwarts and start her magical education, all the while having someone around to check on her. To find her if she'd collapsed under the influence of a Dementor…

She had been attacked by a Boggart her second afternoon here. A _Boggart_; a creature she'd had no clue even existed. A Boggart that had taken the form of what she feared the most; the Dementors Sirius had told her about. Dementors she truly hadn't understood the power of. Sirius had lived in a place with not just one brief exposure to a Dementor, but permanently surrounded, night and day, for twelve years.

As she tipped out the contents of the drawers of her bedroom dresser onto an old pillowcase, she salvaged a diamond bracelet; a grappa glass; a half-full bottle of something called firewhiskey; a charm-bracelet and an old watch; an enamel box; a jacket of dragon-hide that shimmered iridescent purplish-black, lined with silk; the shell of a tortoise that would have been completely normal it hadn't been encrusted with jewels; and a set of very pretty miniature chess-pieces carved from ivory and amethyst with tiny gold filigree details, encased in a dainty little cherrywood box inlaid with an ebony and mother-of-pearl chessboard, Maia thought about Sirius, her uncle, and her mother. The _Order_.

From their reactions, Maia guessed that her mother had been a member of the Order of the Phoenix, for surely no one not connected to the Order would have affected everyone downstairs when they heard Maia was her daughter?

After emptying the dresser drawers, throwing most of the contents straight into a bin-bag, she washed the drawers, and the dresser itself, angling them into the sunshine splashing in from the open windows to dry before polishing them. She wanted to line the drawers with pretty paper to preserve the bottoms.

Anyone who stumbled upon the room then would have seen a large daybed set at an angle in the centre of the room, a dresser and its drawers pointing towards the huge windows limning everything with a dazzling golden light, an old-fashioned trunk thrown open and now spilling its contents; more of the glossy magazines Maia loved, the back-catalogue of _Vogue_ in particular; stacks of books tumbling over; a collection of sewing-boxes; clothes, and, set on the bed and leaning against the padded footboard, the five-foot corkboard laden with mementos, the bedding scattered and piled with art supplies and her own large watercolour paintings, mounted beautifully, fat folders of photograph negatives and big scrapbooks and boxes of photographs she had neatly mounted but had yet to frame.

When Tonks appeared, all strawberry-pink ringlets and jingling chains dangling from her studded belt, she grinned, diving to scoop up a glossy _Vogue_ magazine from last month, a copy of _Dark Desires After Dusk_ and a handful of photographs that had fluttered from Maia's enormous box of them.

"Settling in alright, then?" she grinned, glancing around the room. "Sirius said you have the work-ethic of a cart-horse."

"I don't like grime," Maia said quietly; an understatement. Tonks chuckled, and Maia noticed the large brown-leather duffel-bag slung over her shoulder. "How was the meeting?"

"Very good," Tonks grinned. "We're hopeful we're about to get about a handful of new recruits, so that's always good. Ales is working a few of her contacts in the entertainment industry, and they're always good to have on your side when you want a message spread."

"Music and literature; two of the most powerful mediums of news spreading," Maia agreed. She sighed, setting down the photograph-album she had been examining. "What can I do for you?"

"Actually, I wanted to come up and give you this," Tonks said, beaming, and Maia cleared a space on the bed so Tonks could set down the bag. "Told you last night I'd bring you over some things. Sirius says you've been keeping him in Muggle records, but, Ales and I both agreed to initiate you into Witching society, so… I brought you some of the doubles from my record-collection, and a few new magazines, you know." She unzipped the bag with a flourish, lugging out a foot-high stack of magazines, of which the pictures all moved, and an even greater number of extremely artistic record-sleeves that she set on the top of the dresser. "And, I could never bear to throw 'em away, but they don't fit me anymore. I could Metamorph to fit them, but some of the things are a bit risqué for the office!" She snorted to herself, shaking her head, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, "_Getting_ _old_". "So I brought you some of my favourite old clothes. They've still got a lot of use…"

"You didn't have to do this!" Maia breathed, a little delighted, laughing as Tonks pulled edgy, gorgeous dresses, a pair of dragon-hide boots and a hand-sewn beaded silk bolero with long, diaphanous muscovite sleeves; lovely Fair Isle cardigans and a gorgeous pair of beaded velvet trousers that reminded Maia of _Fabergé_ eggs; as well as a number of customised skirts; a few tops and handmade, customised jackets. Some of the clothes looked handmade, specifically the bolero, one of the formal dresses with its nipped, boned waist and flirty hemline.

"I wanted to!" Tonks grinned. "They were just being unloved in the wardrobe at my mum's house; she's always threatening to chuck my stuff out if I don't do something with it. I told her it'd be like me handing them down to a younger-sister. She's curious about you. So's my dad; laughed himself out of his armchair when I told him you're a pureblood Black raised in the Muggle world. Mum said her parents would be turning in their graves… I think she enjoyed the idea. Oh! And these are all the old Wizarding novels I read when I was your age. Some of 'em are a bit, er… Well, if you like _this_," she indicated _Dark Desires After Dusk_, with a sultry, shirtless man depicted on the front-cover, "you'll love 'em. And there's some bedtime stories; I know Muggles have different fairytale stories and things; my granddad used to read me The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Beauty and the Beast."

"Very cool," Maia said, turning over some of the beautifully-bound books Tonks had tossed out of the bag; unlike 'Muggle books', they featured no blurb on the back-cover, but the front was beautifully illustrated or just plainly stamped, but they were each a little tarnished from Tonks having loved them before giving them to Maia.

"And I put in some of my old schoolbooks—well, the ones that I could find, and the ones that aren't covered in dried ink and Bubotuba pus!" Tonks said, hefting out another stack of books, including a set titled _Standard Book of Spells_, grades one to seven, though Grade Four was missing. "I nearly had to go to St Mungo's after picking up my old copy of _One Thousand Magical Plants and Fungi_!" Maia laughed, reaching for _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_, drawn to discover whether there was anything inside its pages dedicated to obliterating Dementors.

"Oh, you don't want to start reading that," Tonks warned. "Not this time of night, and not after the day you've had."

"I was going to see if there's a section on Dementors," Maia said.

"There is; but, like I said, it's not really light reading," Tonks said. "Come on, bring some magazines down. And I'll grab some records. We'll go through some of them. Sirius says, do you have any notepaper, so you can start planning out the new decorations. You're going to Diagon Alley tomorrow?"

"Yes," Maia beamed; she _was_ undeniably excited about that.

"Have you never been before?" Tonks asked, eyeing her inscrutably.

"Never," Maia said, flushing a little. She knew she was an oddity, a pureblood belonging to the oldest of wizarding families raised in the Muggle world. "I've been to Wizarding communities in Europe, Russia, the Middle-East and parts of India and Africa, but I've never seen Wizarding Britain."

"Blimey! Well…you'll love Diagon Alley, it's a cultural melting-pot for a load of foreign wizards," Tonks said with conviction, grinning. She gathered up an armful of records; Maia grabbed the magazines Tonks had given her, and picked up her large wicker-basket crammed full with art supplies, as well as some of the half-finished watercolours she had done for _Sleeping Beauty_; _Rumpelstiltskin_; _The White Snake_; _Bluebeard_; _Puss in Boots_; _Diamonds and Toads_; _Biancabella and the Snake_ and _The Twelve Dancing Princesses_. Maia made her way downstairs with Tonks, now far less upset, the heat of the day, finishing her quilt, and some rigorous manual labour working wonders to soothe her.

The meeting was over, but not all of the Order members had gone home; the kitchen was vibrant with laughter and conversation, and while those Order members who stayed to chat with Sirius and Remus sat at the table, with tea, other drinks and scones, biscuits and the big bowl of fresh fruit Maia had set out earlier, Maia set about making dinner: stuffed chicken-thighs, pan-fried, with a tray of roasted asparagus, red-onion and tomatoes on the vine, a bowl of minted new-potatoes freshly dug up from the garden, a jug of cider and a sweating pitcher of garnished elderflower cordial and ice-water. Tonks, adamant she wanted to help, Maia set the task of pouring orange-infused caramel over freshly-made Portuguese tarts and refilling drinks. Sirius charmed the plates and cutlery to set the table itself, and everyone turned their attention to their plates. The dinner-party consisted of Remus, Sirius and Maia, as well as Ailith, Tonks, Emmeline Vance and Kingsley Shacklebolt.

"This looks wonderful," Kingsley said, in his slow, comforting voice, and Maia smiled as she encouraged everyone to help themselves.

"And you did all of this without magic," Emmeline tutted wonderingly: While she had spoken with Kingsley and Remus, Emmeline had been watching Maia curiously as she did everything, as Emmeline had noted, by hand.

"You know, if I keep telling my mum what a great cook you are, she's going to start expecting me to take lessons from you," Tonks said, shaking her head; yesterday, Tonks' hair had been waist-length and metallic turquoise. Today, her hair brushed her chin in bouncy, strawberry-pink ringlets.

"Don't be ridiculous," Sirius chuckled. "Dromeda always loved mothering; if you told her you didn't want her to look after you any more, what would she do with her time?"

"Drive my dad up the wall, probably," Tonks laughed, yelping when she upset the pitcher of cordial, then started hopping around the kitchen because the ice from the pitcher had splashed into her lap. Maia laughed, her previous confusion and grief, not forgotten, but no longer dwelled on. After the still-warm tarts were handed around, Kingsley and Emmeline were supplied with after-dinner coffees, and only Ailith and Tonks remained, chatting comfortably with Sirius and Remus, pulling Maia into the conversation once the washing-up had been finished, and she stood at the end of the table kneading dough for bread and setting a ball of pastry in the larder to chill. Sirius had found the wicker-basket stuffed with Maia's art supplies, and he drew out the half-finished paintings, and he and the others combed through them as Maia kneaded bread, Ailith trying to educate Sirius and Remus on Muggle fairytales, making both Ailith and Maia giggle at the names of some of the Wizarding fairytales.

"The most famous storyteller was Beedle the Bard, though most of his original work is still printed in runes," Sirius said. "_If_ you can find an original edition, that is. They've been sanitised over the centuries."

"Do you mean Ancient Runes?" Maia asked curiously, glancing up at Sirius, who was now reading one of the fashion magazines Tonks had given Maia, which featured quite a few patterns for hand-sewing, advertisements for _Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions_ dressrobes, Madam Primpernelle's beautifying potions, and a small shop in Diagon Alley that sold everything Maia would need to continue quilting. While she had kneaded, she had been looking at the moving pictures of models wearing specific, glittering garments, animated demonstrations of specific stitches, curious about the little square flashing up-to-the-minute sales at specific shops.

"Yep," Sirius smiled. "There should be a copy in the library somewhere. My dad used to read us the Tale of the Three Brothers when we were kids."

"Maybe I could translate it," Maia said thoughtfully.

"Do you know Ancient Runes?" Sirius asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Diane taught me," Maia said simply, shrugging her shoulder.

"What else did Diane teach you?" Sirius asked curiously. "She was always a character."

"Did you know her?" Maia asked, eyes wide as she glanced up quickly.

"I met her a few times," Sirius said, shrugging slightly. And he told her about the first time he had met the mercurial Diane de Lusignan: "I'd been invited to Sunday-lunch, and Diane answered the door. She told me that Jupiter and Venus were in alignment, therefore it was fortuitous I should be there, and then she says, her back snapping straight, her eyes glowing, 'I feel we are called to go in search of cake'." Maia gave a watery smile as Sirius chuckled. "She told me the house-elves tried to hide the cakes from here, but she went around the kitchen, lifting cake-tins to feel how heavy they were, inspecting casserole-dishes, and she found a Black Forest gateau hidden inside a bushel of apples. I think we must've split the entire cake between us, and of course, we then had to sit through a full roast dinner, and when it comes time for pudding, there's no Black Forest gateau to be found; your grandfather, of course, suspected Diane, but she simply patted her mouth with her napkin, stood up and glided to the door. Then she turned, and gave me the most obvious and naughtiest wink I've _ever_ seen."

Maia chuckled, imagining the teenaged, vagabond Sirius being invited to the Big House for a full Sunday lunch—and she could even more easily see Diane demolishing an entire cake.

"So Diane was always a cake-fiend, even before I was born?" she said, smiling softly.

"She was!" Sirius laughed. "'Course, it left me in a sticky situation, that _wink_! I'd wolfed down the Minister for Magic's favourite pudding and left him nothing for after dinner!" Maia grinned. "It was alright in the end, though, Godfrey assured me that I wasn't the first victim of Diane's eccentricities. To this day, I can still taste the cherry filling between the layers of that chocolate-cake."

"Was it slathered together with clotted cream?" Maia asked curiously. When she made Black Forest gateau, she used a very specific recipe, and it always called for fresh clotted-cream instead of just the whipped stuff.

"Clotted cream, sour cherries simmered with cherry-jam and kirschwasser, the chocolate sponge sprinkled with cherry liqueur," Sirius grinned reminiscently. "With shavings of chocolate on the cream, and fresh cherries and chocolate curls on top." Maia grinned. That was the way she made it, to Diane's very exact specifications.

"Diane always loved it when I made Black Forest gateau," she said softly. She hadn't known it was her grandfather's favourite pudding, too.

"You kept her in cakes?" Sirius smiled.

"When I was thirteen, she enrolled me in the Wizarding cooking-school in Paris," Maia smiled. She had _loved_ living briefly in Wizarding Paris. "There was an incident at school, so Diane took me on 'sabbatical', and I spent weeks learning how to cook—Diane was especially keen I learn pâtisserie."

"And did you?"

"I can make choux pastry in my sleep," Maia smiled. "I'd be a few stone lighter if I hadn't gone to that cooking school." She was a slender girl, used to walking long distances, cycling regularly, doing hard manual labour in the vegetable-patches, so it wasn't a surprise she was slim and toned, but at thirteen, broaching awkward the gap between childhood and becoming a woman, she had been skinny, with sharp elbows, too much hair and arms strong as steel, comfortable neither as a girl nor as a woman. But her responsibilities at home and her frequent travelling had given her a lot of maturity and confidence for her age. "I loved learning pâtisserie."

"Did you learn using magic?" Sirius asked curiously.

"No. Special exception was made for me, the head of the school was a friend of Diane's, so I learned everything, but did it…the Muggle way," Maia said, shrugging. "I don't have a wand, so…"

"We can go tomorrow and get your wand," Sirius said thoughtfully. "Moony, you said the market's on?"

"They'll all be out," Remus nodded."

"Um…Sirius?" Maia said awkwardly, flushing softly at Remus, Ailith and Tonks all sitting in the kitchen with her and Sirius; Sirius raised his eyebrows in an invitation for her to continue. "I…I don't have any galleons. I can exchange some of my pounds-sterling—" Sirius let out a bark-like laugh, his pale eyes twinkling.

"Maia, you're a Black!" he chuckled. "That means you have access to the family vault. _And_ you're the sole heir to your mother's family fortune."

"Fortune?" Maia said curiously.

"Your mother's family vault is one of the oldest vaults, deep down in the bowels of Gringott's," Sirius said, and as Maia set the ball of pastry in a bowl to rest and rise, Ailith refilled her glass, Sirius nicked a cardamom and lemon cookie, and he told her all about Gringott's, and how they had to pass by a dragon to get to her mother's family vault. Maia didn't like the sound of it at all—the dragon being kept captive, deep under the earth, mistreated by the goblins who had trained it to feel pain whenever it heard a particular noise. No, she didn't like that at all. She hadn't expected to learn that there were so many _bad_ things about the Wizarding world, things Muggles had outlawed centuries ago; slavery, animal cruelty.

"I know. It's not fair that you have to learn about things this way," Ailith said, because Sirius was now too distracted watching her every movement as she mixed batter for her _special_ Black Forest gateau, inspired to bake it by Sirius' memories of Diane. "There _are_ many fantastical things about this world, but being able to wield magic has given wizards a severe superiority complex. Even before You-Know-Who rose to power, there were plenty of wizards—well, they all became his servants!—who held medieval views—"

"—like my parents," Sirius interjected.

"—and believed that magical education should be restricted to those who are of _pure_ blood lineage," Ailith said, chuckling silently as she watched Sirius creep ever closer to Maia's mixing-bowl, eyeing the decadently thick chocolate batter.

"You-Know-Who?" Maia frowned, glancing at Ailith.

"See, that's why Dumbledore says you should use his name," Sirius said, glancing at Ailith before continuing, "It gets so confusing. Ailith means Voldemort." Ailith and Tonks both winced, and Maia had seen such a reaction, in various degrees, in other Order members; she nodded, separating the batter into two cocoa-dusted cake-tins.

Aided by Ailith, who had the benefit of having come from a Muggle household, the better to see with a fresh set of eyes the flaws of the society she now reported on, Sirius was off, telling Maia about the very worst aspects of wizarding society, things she should be wary of when she got to Hogwarts. Learning that one of their own great-aunts had campaigned to make Muggle-hunting legal, Maia had almost dropped the cake-tins she had carried over to the oven.

"Well, from my experience living in a Muggle world, and hearing what you've told me about pureblood wizards' beliefs, I'd say Muggles are the higher state of evolution," Maia said coolly, dusting her hands off after safely closing the oven door. Seating herself at the table with the magazines Tonks had given her, she pulled her watercolour paints toward her.

Though they had met only a day and a half ago, Maia's conversations with her newly-discovered uncle and his oldest friend had often become very profound as they had scrubbed this house, and she appreciated how _intelligent_ Sirius and Remus were; after hearing about Wizards' persecution of werewolves, reminded of the slavery of house-elves, she told them everything she knew about American slavery, the Middle Passage (which had made her cry with bitterness and frustration when she had studied it), the treatment of slaves in the South of America and how segregation and persecution had continued in some areas to the present day; she told them about the civil rights movements, about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, whom Remus asked to read anything about if Maia still had the documents; she told them about the laws against cruelty to animals and the RSPCA, and it spoke of how much Maia read that she could tell them all these things.

"Surely all Muggle students don't know as much as this?" Sirius said, perplexed, glancing from Maia to Ailith and back as Maia rattled off the American Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its Amendments.

"I had very good History teachers," Maia shrugged. "I got to choose a lot of my modules for A-level, too; I wanted to study American history, and Early-Modern Britain and the Civil Rights Movement in America. And I also took a module on European Reformations, which was fascinating. Very fun. Witch-burnings." She grinned, and they chuckled.

"That will be fascinating, to study the purges from Wizards' perspective, compared to how it's taught in Muggle schools," Ailith said, observing her with those clear cornflower eyes, which were now thoughtful and calm. "And add to it your knowledge of popular culture in the Muggle world, and how they perceive witches _now_."

"Fascination," Maia answered honestly. "Are there histories about the burnings, from the perspective of witches and wizards?"

"Oh, God, loads!" Ailith said, setting down her little glass of brandy. She was such a toff! Maia couldn't help smiling. "Professor Binns had us write umpteen essays on the subject for History of Magic." Maia nodded. Being a magical historian despite being a squib, Diane had taught Maia a lot about Wizard history, though to her it was more just stories, like Sleeping Beauty and _Discworld_.

"Would there be any in the library?" she asked Sirius. "And are there any records of Wizarding law and legislation? I'd love to see the state of Wizarding laws, if they're as backward and prejudiced as you say."

"They are," Sirius said shortly, examining the contents of his own glass, which was topped off with finest firewhiskey. "There are probably a few volumes in the library. My father and my uncle—Tonks' grandfather—were always arguing about the deteriorating state of the 'recently great' Ministry. They hated any law that put Muggle-borns and half-bloods on a par with purebloods."

"I find that fascinating," Maia admitted. "In the Muggle world, you can be discriminated against for the colour of your skin, or your religion or illnesses—in the wizarding world, it's all about genealogy?"

"Mm. If you go back far enough in any pureblood's family tree, you'll eventually get to the point where the first wizard was produced in the family. That's where the 'pureblood' family tree begins, they just ignore anything earlier."

"And I'll bet there were 'pureblood' wizards back then who looked at these new guys and thought, 'Muggle born'!" Maia said disdainfully.

"Maybe, I'm not sure. Some British pureblood families go back to the Romans, some of them _came_ from Rome, and other parts of the world, and they brought a long history with them," Sirius said. "But families like that are rare these days—they've died out. There are certainly a lot of figures in wizarding history—even some Muggles are aware of—who were in Britain long before the Romans. It's rumoured that Salazar Slytherin started the pureblood supremacy nastiness, at least in Britain."

"He's the one who built the Chamber of Secrets, with the basilisk?" Maia asked, and Sirius nodded. Ailith and Tonks glanced at Sirius, curious, but he didn't expound on the subject. "So, I suppose some very narcissistic, self-important wizard centuries ago was passed over for something he wanted by another wizard who didn't have the same prestigious family lineage, and started making laws against him out of spite."

"Yep," Sirius said darkly. "And you can bet their names will have been Black, Malfoy, Lestrange, Nott, or any of the lines Death Eaters' families stemmed from. Bulstrode, Parkinson, Greengrass, too."

"Surely there are people like you born to these families?" Maia frowned. "You know, _intelligent_ people who see it's all just bullshit and a smokescreen for open, uneducated hatred and malicious discrimination."

"Maia, I was the first person in the _entire_ Black family to be sorted out of Slytherin," Sirius chuckled. "If there were decent wizards born in other families, they were probably swiftly disowned just like I was."

"I can't understand that," Maia frowned. "Don't they realise they'll all die out and have to marry their cousins if they want to keep their blood 'pure'. They should learn a thing or two from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert—she passed on a genetic blood defect that went to nearly every royal family in Europe and Russia!" Ailith chuckled. Even having attended Hogwarts since the age of eleven, every child in England learned about Queen Victoria before they left primary-school. "And I know that an entire _empire_ completely caved due to that; the Russian tsar and his wife were so concerned over their heir being a haemophilic that they allowed a mad monk to influence them. Cost them their lives."

"The last Imperial family of Russia always made me sad," Ailith said gently.

"Me too," Maia said; she felt such a profound connection to the last tsar and his family because her own had been lost in a tragedy she was beginning to have inklings about, though she didn't want to bring the subject up again, at least not in a crowded room: her mother had been one of four sisters and a brother, all of whom had been lost in the same tragic event. They had left a legacy of hundreds of scrapbooks filled with moving photographs, and an astounding collection of jewelled eggs that outshone even the Russian Imperial _Fabergé_ collection: her aunt had only let her open the protective cases in which they were nested; without magic, she would have no way of repairing them if Maia dropped one, but they had remained objects of fascination to Maia since childhood, almost as much as the photographs.

"Well, as to genetic defects, I think the very large flaw purebloods pass on is their ideology," Sirius sighed, smirking at Remus, who was nodding off, Tonks chuckling under her breath as she read a magazine and cradled a Butterbeer, lifting her nose to scent the rich chocolate cakes baking in the oven.

"Surely they must see that it'll all become redundant soon," Maia frowned. "You said the pureblood families are becoming obsolete because they'd rather die childless than marry a Muggle-born. There'll be only half-bloods or Muggle-borns left… They'll have to accept, at some point, that the old prejudices can't last."

"There are some incredibly _good_ pureblood families, you have to understand that," Sirius said, glancing at Maia. "And to them it doesn't matter what blood is running in your veins. The Weasleys are purebloods, and you've seen what they're like. And Lily Evans was a _fantastically_ talented witch, and she was the first witch in a long line of Muggles in her family. And then there are purebloods who can't manage the simplest of spells with any real oomph. But a lot of witches and wizards, of my generation and older, were raised to believe that purebloods alone held true power, that they _deserved_ to be the ones to wield authority because they could claim fourteen generations back, their family were wizards. And, while wizards have continued to undermine and oppress other magical races, prejudices against those they've kept downtrodden have been sharpened. Which is why you'll find laws that prohibit a goblin or house-elf carrying a wand, why Fudge's senior undersecretary can get away with forcing laws through the Wizengamot that prohibit werewolves from working, which only perpetuates the cycle of distrust and hatred werewolves have to wizard-kind, and makes it no wonder they'll attack a wizard for the robes on his back… This has been going on for centuries—Lord Voldemort capitalised on it, but he didn't create it, and he used wizards' fears about giants and werewolves against them."

Maia sighed heavily, setting the baked cakes on a cooling-rack, smirking as Sirius, Ailith and Tonks all sat up a little straighter, eyes on them. "Well, purebloods sound like cunts to me."

Sirius choked a laugh, flashing her a wolfish grin as Ailith and Tonks both laughed in surprise. "Maia, you're making me nostalgic."

"How's that?" Maia asked, smiling.

"Bringing back memories of arguments with my mother," Sirius said, pretending to dab at tears with a dishtowel. Maia grinned. "If only she was here to listen to her darling Regulus's little girl talk with such _language_." He gave her a saucy smile, chuckling. "I hope she's turning in her grave." Chuckling to himself, Sirius pulled the pile of records over to him, going through them, and, after waking Remus with a rather loud record from _The_ _Who_, "subjecting" Remus to a re-visitation of their youth with Sirius dragging the boys out to gigs held by his favourite bands, griping to Ailith, once correspondent to the music-scene for the _Daily Prophet_, that _Ball-Gag and Shackles_ had broken up since his incarceration.

"The lead-singer and bassist formed _Circe's Swine_ with the…guitarist from _The Proverbial Thunderbolt_, and the drummer from the _Overblown Egos_," Remus said, looking up from one of his cracked-spine books; having passed around glasses of cider mulled with her special blend of spices, Maia had her painting supplies out and was doing little postcard-sized watercolours of some of the upstairs rooms, for decorating ideas and colour-schemes. Ailith was writing, and Tonks sat jigging her ankle to the music as she listened, her hands clasped behind her head.

"How do you know that?" Sirius asked bemusedly, glancing at his old friend as if wondering whether he had just developed a split-personality. From what Sirius had told Maia of Remus as a teenager, he had always been the quieter of the boys, calm and fond of reading. Remus liking a band named _Ball-Gag and Shackles_ made Maia grin, and Tonks chuckled.

"I liked them too, remember," Remus said. "1996, the Brass Jobberknoll." Sirius moaned softly, his eyes sliding closed, and his expression was that of utmost elation.

"So much energy," he smiled. "They whipped the crowd into a frenzy."

"_You_ saw them at the Jobberknoll in '96?! That was a _famous_ gig!" Tonks said, gazing wide-eyed at Remus and Sirius. Remus nodded.

"I haven't heard anything like them in a while," Remus said.

"_The Weird Sisters_ come close," Ailith said, glancing up, "but they're nothing to _The Flying Horklump Brigade_."

"Well, yeah, they're the _Rolling Stones_ of the Wizarding world," Sirius remarked idly.

"I love _The_ _Rolling Stones_," Maia smiled, wiping up a splash of water from the jar she was using to clean her brush.

"They are legendary," Sirius nodded. "It's a shame not more witches and wizards have heard of them."

"That's what I don't understand," Maia said, frowning. "Music is pervasive. So is literature. How can wizards be so isolated that most of them have never heard of _The_ _Lord_ _of_ _the_ _Rings_, or Snow White? Or _Elvis_, for heaven's sake?"

"Wizard and Muggle cultures are two completely separate spheres," Remus said.

"I'll say," Maia said, frowning slightly at his work spread out before him on the table. "In the last hundred years, Muggles have invented cars, the computer, the internet, iPods and CGI animation, yet Wizards still wear floor-length robes and write with quills."

"You will find mixed houses have those kinds of things," Remus said. "A house with a witch or wizard and a Muggle," he added, at Maia's bemused frown. "And those wizards help others of our kind integrate with Muggles when it's necessary. But for the most part, wizards keep to themselves."

"Doesn't make sense," Maia sighed, shaking her head. She still couldn't wrap her head around the level of isolation wizards imposed on themselves. It seemed to her to be not so much upholding the Statute of Secrecy, but imposing total isolation from another _species_, almost.

"Well!" Tonks blurted, coming out of a sort of doze, and she preened and stretched as she stood; Maia thought she saw Remus's gaze lingering at the strip of tummy her top bared as she stretched. "I'd like to've stayed longer, but I've got to relieve Mad-Eye in the morning, and if I'm late I'll never hear the end of it."

"Stop by in the morning for some breakfast," Sirius said hospitably.

"Thanks! I will!" Tonks beamed.

"If you don't get put in St Mungo's tripping over your boot-laces, Tonks, they've come undone," Remus frowned, and Tonks glanced down, her strawberry-fuchsia curls bouncing. She pointed her wand at her shoe-laces (today, she had managed to put on a matching pair of boots, though her socks were still mismatched and one of them was falling down) but the laces tied themselves together. Maia heard Tonks grumble as she squatted to untie them, "…_can put a Dark wizard in Azkaban but I can't even magic my own blinking shoelaces together…_ Right!" She darted upright again, beaming, once her laces were knotted in bows. "I'll see you—oh! I promised I'd bring pudding if I stayed for dinner again!"

"Bring a pudding and we'll _let_ you stay for dinner next time," Sirius chuckled, and he showed Tonks, and Ailith, who was frowning at the scroll of parchment she had been working on, upstairs; she squeezed Sirius's hand lightly before trailing out of the house, still deep in thought. Tonks grinned as she darted out of the house, waving, and the two women disappeared.

The light lingering longer and longer each evening, the summer predicted to be an absolute scorcher, and Sirius confessed his worry that Maia would keep his nose to the grinding-stone for as long as he could see his hand in front of his face to clean, but Maia just chuckled, and sautéed some mushrooms, buttered slices of toast, and their supper was a bottle of Butterbeer each and mushrooms on toast, sprawled on the front-step and soaking up the sunshine.

Compared to the number twelve, Grimmauld Place Maia had arrived at only yesterday, when she stumbled back into the hall, rubbing her tired eyes, Remus locking the front-door behind them, the house was unrecognisable. Everything in sight shone and glowed, scrubbed clean and freshly-waxed or washed until it sparkled like crystal, the window-frames stripped and needing painting, the polished walls bared of grubby, age-blackened paintings. The dome at the very top of the gallery staircase now sparkled and glittered with light, had shed warm amber and golden light everywhere, and now Maia could see the stars through the pristine glass.

"Diagon Alley tomorrow," Sirius said quietly, with a subtle undercurrent of profound excitement.

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><p>Maia woke up very suddenly, rather unexpectedly, a pair of bulbous eyes glowing eerily in the dark at her.<p>

She screamed, loudly, her adrenaline spiking, her heart-rate jumping, blood rushing past her ears like an _AC/DC_ drum-line, images of Gollum flashing through her mind.

There was a scurrying noise, and amber light from the streetlight outside seemed to fill the room with an orangey glow as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness; the same enormous pale eyes glowed from across the room now, smaller. She could make out a stooped little figure, barely more than two feet tall, with bat-like ears; as the light grew, it illuminated skin that seemed too big for a little, long-footed and spindly-fingered figure; a snout-like nose brought to mind the shrunken heads she and Sirius had removed from the halfway-landing, and the light made copious amounts of white hair sprouting from the bat-like ears twinkle dully.

A filthy loincloth completed the nightmarish vision. Waking up to the little creature looming over her silently had her choking on her own breaths. Shivering, as she wondered if anything was hiding under the bed, Maia crept out from the duvet, sidling closer to the little form. It stared at her with wide, pale, unblinking eyes.

Maia stared back for a moment. Then her brain caught up to the adrenaline pumping through her veins, and she put the pieces together.

"Are you…Kreacher?" she asked tentatively. The little thing blinked, seeming to shrink away from her. "You don't have to be afraid—I'm sorry I shouted. Hello." She offered her hand. The little elf's massive eyes flickered from her face to her outstretched hand, but he didn't take it. "Didn't Sirius or Remus tell you I was coming to stay? I'm Regulus's daughter, Maia." The elf's massive eyes, if possible, grew even more enormous.

"Master Regulus," he croaked, in a voice deep as a bull-frog's. Maia hastily concealed a jump; she hadn't expected the voice.

"Yes. I'm his daughter," she said, licking her lips nervously. "I don't think he ever told anybody about me. But I've come to stay here, with Sirius, until I go to school… I'd been wondering when I'd meet you."

"Master Regulus' daughter…" Kreacher croaked, seemingly to himself; Maia nodded anyway. His enormous eyes seemed to fill with tears, and he flung himself into a bow so low his snout-like nose brushed the floorboards. Maia jumped, wide-eyed.

"What are you…? Kreacher, you don't have to do that," she said awkwardly; it was decidedly odd being bowed to. Kreacher strained up, staring at her with those wide, bulbous eyes. "It must be strange having people in the house. Have you been alone since Sirius's mother died?"

"Kreacher has his Mistress's portrait, Miss Maia," Kreacher croaked. "Although she is not herself." Maia blinked.

"Er…she's a portrait," Maia said slowly, wondering how long the house-elf had been having conversations with the deranged, Dorian Gray-esque painting of her grandmother in the downstairs hall. "Kreacher, where have you been hiding the last two days? You do live here, don't you?"

"Kreacher does not leave the house, Mistress Maia," Kreacher croaked. "Kreacher begs his mistress's forgiveness for sneaking."

"That's alright," Maia said kindly. "You just startled me, that's all."

"Kreacher will not do so again," Kreacher croaked, bowing low again. "Kreacher will leave Mistress Maia to rest." There was a _crack_, and he disappeared. Yawning, scratching her head, Maia frowned and climbed back into bed, turning off her lamp, and wondering whether this was all some twisted pseudo-nightmare.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review!


	6. Chapter 06

**A.N.**: I'm updating again, because as soon as I update chapter seven, _Marlicat_ can review! Yay! Also, I left my _Deathly Hallows_ book at uni, so I'm having to describe Gringott's from memory! Oh, also, Marli, I'm in DH-denial, so everything after Dobby appears in Malfoy Manor _DOESN'T HAPPEN_! Neither does You-Know-Who returning in the graveyard; Cedric doesn't go on holiday, but Nagini did! And I have been thinking (dangerous) and have figured out how Maia is an orphan.

I had so much fun writing this chapter and chapter seven!

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_06_

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><p>It was still early when Maia woke: she showered in the downstairs bathroom, scuttling upstairs in her dressing-gown and a hair-wrap, and dressing in one of the summer-dresses she had recently made for herself, the pattern, designed by Maia and created from an old newspaper, was very Fifties, the fabric rose-pink and printed with Van Gogh-style poppies in varying hues of pink and red, cut almost like a shirt-dress, with short, sharp cuffed sleeves, a smart collar scooping to a V-neckline hinting at cleavage, with a wide waist-band featuring several shining buttons, and fully-lined with a flounced petticoat of sunset-orange cotton to give the skirt some fullness, with a flirty hemline brushing her knees.<p>

She let her hair dry naturally, then sorted out a deep parting, pinning it in place, so her natural curls framed her face, finished off with strong hairspray. Everything except for her underwear was handmade; she could make patterns by the time she was six, and earlier in the month she had been treated with a trip to London with friends, blowing off steam after their exams, and they had let her loose in Liberty London.

She _adored_ clothes, designing them, creating patterns, especially the finished-product; and she loved the tiny waist and flirty hemlines of the 1950s—a recent but passionate affair with _Call the Midwife_ had her boning her bodices so she didn't have to wear a bra, nipping in the waist with thick waistbands, piped seams and sashes, having arguments with bust-darts, weighting hemlines and investing in a choice red lipstick.

She made her way downstairs, after applying a lick of her favourite red lipstick. The tang of silver polish lingered on the air, making her want to sneeze, despite the windows all being thrown open, and as she made her way downstairs—dodging the grandfather-clock—she noticed subtle differences in each of the stripped, scrubbed rooms she passed: the candelabra and the sconces on the walls, the chandeliers, were all pristine, sparkling, not a hint of dried wax or cobwebs to be seen. Doorknobs glistened, and as she made her way down the stairs, each of the hanging glass lanterns glowed vivid emerald, reattached to the gallery archways where she and Sirius had pulled them down for cleaning.

Too early for the others to be awake yet, Maia cut herself several slices of fresh bread, toasting them and slathering them with fresh butter and the very delicate honey from her own bees, and, armed with a pair of dragon-hide gloves, decided to get a head start on cleaning out Sirius's father's study.

Maia had seen the long, thick leather belt, with a rather evil buckle, hanging from a nail outside the study door, and she remembered what Sirius had said about it, that, "Every time I misbehaved, he'd send me to go and get it…so I knew what was about to happen…" The belt was the first thing she tore down; but inside the study was a different matter.

Every surface was covered with photographs in different expensive frames: the desk was so pristinely organised; Sirius said his father had always liked to keep things so organised he could find what he needed in the dark. But there were more photographs on here, too, most of two good-looking boys with the same dark hair, but also of three beautiful girls, some of the photographs from when they were babies, but the last of them were wedding-photographs, and the youngest of the three girls, and the only blonde, cradling a little baby. Sirius had told her about Bellatrix, in Azkaban for torturing a very well-loved Auror and his wife to insanity; Andromeda, Tonks' mother; and Narcissa, a "stuck-up cow who married the most evil Wizard alive besides Voldemort. Malfoy: he was right in Voldemort's inner-circle. But he managed to snake his way out of jail when Voldemort fell, claiming he'd been under the influence of the Imperius Curse. He keeps giving the Ministry fat donations, so he can ask for favours when he doesn't want legislation passed. I hear their son is a right piece of work, too. He's at school with Harry."

The three girls, Sirius's cousins, were very beautiful—Andromeda and Narcissa most of all; something about Bellatrix made her shiver. But Tonks had been right: Maia _did_ look like Andromeda—but Maia wasn't interested in them as much as she was infatuated with the photograph collection her grandfather had kept of Regulus.

It was _very_ clear that Regulus had been the favourite of his parents. As Sirius had said, "Regulus was younger than me—and a _much_ better son, as I was constantly reminded." Her dad hadn't been as handsome as Sirius, but he was still good-looking, and she could see something of her father's and Sirius's features in her own, which gave her an unexpected thrill. She gathered up the photograph-frames, some of which were silver and were tarnished, and all of which needed dusting, the glass washing; washing and polishing the desk, treating the leather top, she avoided opening the drawers, in case another Boggart dwelt there—Remus said they loved dark places, like wardrobes, desk-drawers and spaces under beds, which was comforting—stripped the carpet up, removed the upholstery from the chairs, and started washing the panelling, above which grubby wallpaper needed removing.

In the kitchen, she sat carefully washing each of the panes of glass from the photograph-frames, washing the dust away and polishing the silver frames, stacking them neatly, and when they were all finished, took her favourites—one of a very young Sirius cuddling and grinning conspiratorially with Regulus; one of the two brothers, a little older but still quite young, sitting cross-legged in front of a twinkling Christmas-tree; and one of the two teenaged brothers, Sirius sprawled magnificently in an armchair, incredibly handsome, about sixteen, with younger Regulus sitting on the arm. It was the only photograph in which the two brothers, at least since they had been children, had seemed to be friendly; the photograph appeared to have been a candid, neither of them realising they had been captured on film, grinning at each other as if in some secret confidence.

She had found no evidence amongst the photographs that her grandfather had ever known about her; there were no photographs of Regulus with her mother, or with a little baby, her. Sirius said he had heard his father had died the same year Regulus had disappeared. Before or after, Sirius couldn't say; he hadn't spoken to anyone in his family since he had run away at sixteen, minus a few letters to Andromeda, who had had Tonks when Sirius had been about fourteen.

Remembering that Sirius had suggested Tonks stop by for breakfast before relieving Mad-Eye Moody of whatever "duty" they were doing for the Order, and, craving_ croque madame_, she set out to make the redesigned version she had come up with, using a muffin-tin, sliced white bread and whatever fillings she had to hand.

She set out to make a fresh béchamel, with some of the beautiful ham she had broiled the other day, and some of her little Bantam eggs. Putting them all together, her _croque madame muffins_ sprinkled with some extra-mature cheddar, they cooked in the oven while she sat working on her watercolour schemes for some of the bedrooms, the dining-room and the library.

Sirius had agreed that Maia could move the various rooms about so the house was laid out with more sense. She was going to move the music-room downstairs, to a room near the drawing-room, and she was planning to turn one of the bedrooms on the same floor into a study, turning her grandfather's study into a bedroom once it had been stripped and cleaned. She had some of the magazines Tonks had given her open in front of her, and she was going through the records Tonks had given her.

She loved The Rapacious Healers, The Puffskeins, APL (Anti-Pureblood League), Patchwork Snidget Complex, The Hallows, Circe's Swine, the Driftaway Kelpies, and especially The Proverbial Thunderbolt, Ball-Gag and Shackles, Perfumed Gobstones, and The Flying Horklump Brigade, which were, true to what Sirius had said earlier, the Wizarding equivalent of the levels of awesome only _The Rolling Stones _had achieved during the 1960s prime era for British rock and roll.

Letting her paintings dry, she sat back, removed the muffins from the oven, and smiled to herself, grabbing a little plate, and two shadows appeared as she tucked in; smiling herself, she watched Sirius and Remus gather up a plate, and their own muffin; Remus flicked his wand at the teapot, which began piping steam, and he poured them all tea.

"Good start to the day," Sirius grinned, polishing off his muffin, moaning with delight as his eyes slid closed.

"I suppose Tonks isn't coming over for breakfast," Maia said, and Remus smiled.

"Moody was here earlier; she was running late," he said, wiping the last of the béchamel and egg-yolk from his plate with the last of the crust.

"Sirius…" Maia said tentatively, and he grunted softly, raising his eyebrows in invitation to keep talking. "Why does Kreacher wear a loin-cloth?"

"Sneak up on you, did he?" Sirius scowled, dusting off his hands. "Clothes are forbidden; a house-elf can only be freed when they're presented by their master with clothes. The loincloth is a mark of his enslavement." Maia gaped.

"Do…do _all_ house-elves have to wear them?"

"No," Sirius said, smiling slightly. "The Hogwarts house-elves wear pillowcases and dishtowels printed with the Hogwarts emblem. Back when my mother was alive I'm sure Kreacher wore similar, but he's been left on his own…"

"Where's his room?" Maia asked curiously.

"He's made a sort of nest in the boiler-room," Sirius said, looking disgruntled, and Maia nodded. While Sirius and Remus went upstairs briefly, Maia plucked a plain white, freshly-laundered and very soft pillowcase from a pile in the laundry-room; she swiftly sewed a button in the centre of one end of the pillowcase, creating a little buttonhole on the other side, and, remembering some of the things she had saved from Sirius's scourge of the first-floor bedrooms, she rooted through the sheet she had piled with antiques and trinkets to clean, and found the selection of stickpins that had caught her attention. Remembering what Sirius had said of the Hogwarts house-elves wearing the Hogwarts emblem, she found the small silver stickpin topped with what Sirius had said was the Black family crest.

She went over to the door Sirius had indicated, into the boiler-room, and knocked hesitantly. Luminous eyes appeared in the dark, and Maia hid a shiver as thoughts of Gollum crept into her mind.

"Hello, Kreacher," she smiled. But her eyes slid past the ancient elf to what Sirius had said was his room; under the old-fashioned boiler was a nest, as Sirius had said, of old, very dirty blankets, and a cluster of items scavenged, magpie-like, from her and Sirius's purge of the house. This was where Kreacher had been sleeping for the last ten years? Her insides crumpled, and she bit her lip as she pulled the door open a little wider, inviting Kreacher out into the kitchen.

"Mistress Maia requires service from Kreacher?" the elf croaked in his deep, bullfrog voice, sweeping her a low bow.

"Er… Actually, well…" Maia said, a little disconcerted by the bow. "I, er…noticed that you wear that cloth. I thought you might like something different to wear." Kreacher's bulbous eyes flickered.

"N-n-not _clothes_?" he moaned, starting to rock on his feet. Maia, remembering what Sirius had said about house-elves and clothes, quickly reassured him.

"No, not clothes, it's not clothes, don't worry," Maia said quickly. "No, it's a…a pillowcase," she added dubiously. It was snowy-white, and very soft cotton, but still…it was a pillowcase. Kreacher blinked, seeming to calm down, and his eyes went to the pillowcase she held in her hands. "I just have to see if it fits properly first, hold on." She carefully looped the pillowcase over his right-side, bringing the button together at the left side of his waist, and nodded to herself. Gathering the top corners of the pillowcase together over Kreacher's left shoulder, she took the safety-end off the pin and carefully stuck it through the pillowcase corners, attaching the safeguard to the end.

"There you go," she smiled. "I'll sew some more buttons on another few pillowcases, and you can keep the pin."

Kreacher stared at her with wide, bulbous eyes. Quite suddenly, making Maia jump, he gave a wail of misery and his knees gave out. "Kreacher? What—what've I done? I didn't stick you with the pin, did I? Kreacher?"

"Overkill," said a deep voice, and Maia glanced over her shoulder, wide-eyed; Sirius was leaning in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded over his chest, looking highly amused, as Kreacher sank to the tiled floor. It took ten minutes for him to regain his composure enough, at being given a Black family heirloom (the nondescript stickpin) for his very own, to totter into his boiler-room den. Maia shrugged: The poor creature had been so starved for any affection in the last _decade_ that he disappeared, teetering and hiccoughing. Frowning, Maia pulled out her camera. She didn't know why, but she just had to document the state in which Kreacher had been living. She took a photograph of his nest, and closed the boiler-room door.

"Are you ready to go?" Sirius asked. Remus briefly popped her over to the Hobbit-hole, to collect the new eggs and feed the girls, and they met Sirius back at Number Twelve.

Diagon Alley. From what the two men had told her of it, and Tonks' conviction that she would love it, Maia was sure she would enjoy her day. And her enthusiasm was outshone only by Sirius's: he had been holed up in number twelve since Professor Dumbledore had secured the house. With her small, buckled sandals with two little straps crossed over her toes, she donned a pair of vintage-style sunglasses propped on her nose, looped her little bag over her head, the contents her purse and her lipstick, and Remus doubled back to the kitchen to grab her wicker basket as they prepared to depart. Strange, to carry one of them around London, but he said she would probably appreciate having it with her, after he had put a complicated charm on it to bear whatever she put in it without losing its original form. He called it an Extending Charm, and she made a point to learn how to do it.

She called a goodbye to Kreacher, not sure he had calmed down enough to stop sobbing with hysterics over the pin, and told them where they were headed.

Sirius had written out a list of things they needed for the house, and Maia added to it her watercolours, and he handed Maia a little key, with written instructions about his private vault number, and what he would like her to remove from it. He had also written details to give to a shop purveyor if a large quantity of money needed to change hands from one vault to another.

Maia heard the locks clicking away behind them when the front-door of number twelve closed, and she jumped; as she had turned around on the pavement, one moment Sirius had been standing there, in his dark jeans, scuffed boots and a long-sleeved shirt, and the next, an enormous, pale-eyed, bear-like black dog stood wagging his tail. Sirius had told Maia that he was an Animagus, yes, and he had described the animal into which he transformed…but this was utterly bizarre!

People seemed wary of Sirius in his dog-form, and as Maia and Remus walked towards wherever it was they had to be to get to Diagon Alley, Sirius tended to part the crowd so all they had to do was keep up. There were a few ill-natured mutterings about a "beast that size" being kept on a lead, and whenever this occurred, Sirius would pause, fixing the person with a very intelligent grimace that promptly sent them scuttling off.

"Well, this is it, Maia. The Leaky Cauldron. It's a very famous pub." If Remus hadn't pointed it out, Maia wouldn't have noticed the tiny, grubby-looking building, stuck between the record-shop Sirius was eyeing longingly, and a rare-book shop on the other side. People hurrying past didn't glance at the pub; their eyes went to the record-shop or the bookshop, and Maia felt distinctly that she, Remus and Sirius were the only ones who could see the Leaky Cauldron. Inside, the pub was sparkling, warm wood panelling glowing in the light of a fire, many happy shoppers breakfasting late and enjoying an early drink, examining parcels and produce, reading newspapers and magazines. The wizened old bartender nodded sharply to Remus, who nodded back, and he ushered Maia out into a small, walled courtyard.

"To get through, you must tap your wand _here_," Remus said, pointing to a brick above a dustbin. Maia glanced dubiously at him. He smiled. "Three up, two across." And he pulled out his wand and tapped the appropriate brick. Sirius made a chuffing noise that might have been a laugh when he saw Maia's jaw drop; the brick had quivered, wriggling, and a small hole appeared where Remus's wand had touched it; the hole grew wider and wider, and a second later they were facing an enormous archway, the kind seen in old medieval wall cities. A cobblestone street twisted and turned out of sight beyond.

"Welcome to Diagon Alley," Remus smiled warmly. Stepping through the archway, Maia wished she had about a dozen of Moody's magical-eyes. There was so much to _see_. She had been to many foreign Wizarding communities, and this one was decidedly _English_.Not only were there vibrant, sunny Tudor-style shops crooked with age, their polished windows filled with the most amazing assortment of things, but brightly-coloured marquees and awnings covered large stalls up and down the street, tending everything from barrels of beetles' eyes to the finest silk tulle; to potions with odd names and fantastical effects; to strange plants and vegetables and chunks of fungi Maia had never heard of; fresh bread of every shape and pattern; great trays of handmade desserts; one stall sold buttons and pins exclusively; a great array of flowers was spread out around the base of a gurgling, sparkling water-fountain featuring a large golden bird. There were shops selling cauldrons, an apothecary glittering with all kinds of powders and bones and herbs.

A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying _Eeylops Owl Emporium_—several eager young children had their faces pressed to the window of a shop called _Quality Quidditch Supplies_; there were windows filled with books the size of paving-slabs bound in leather, tiny books the size of postage-stamps bound in silk; books open and revealing pages full of peculiar symbols, and books with nothing in them at all. There were windows glittering with tiny, beautiful silver instruments, and glass orbs filled with a model of the solar-system, smaller ones filled with something that glittered like starlight; mobiles made of model dragons and broomsticks hung in other windows, and in one shop an enormous telescope stuck out of the glass dome in the slate-shingled roof, shining blindingly rose-gold in the sunshine. There were shops displaying the most beautiful clothing Maia had ever seen, and there was another shop whose window-displays whirred and popped and shrieked and exploded in a shower of fireworks, glass tops spinning eagerly. There was a shop dedicated to all things leather and dragon-hide; and another shop stuffed with wizarding toys, board-games, exquisite dolls and what looked like real, moving models of dragons and a strange winged, horse-tailed birdlike creature; another shop devoted to musical instruments; further down the street, a tortoise with a jewelled shell glittered next to a cage of fuzzy custard-coloured things, and two _pygmy elephants_ no bigger than the sweet, fluffy lion-faced kittens basking in a basket in the sun in the window of the _Magical Menagerie_, the window of which also featured a small poster that read "_Adopt-A-Griffin_", and another that advertised Granian riding-lessons and the "Kneazle Re-homing Programme".

They passed a stall stacked with jars of _eyes_ of every kind; a stall displaying tiny crystal animals no bigger than Maia's thumb, which on closer inspection actually moved and preened delightfully, the miniature elephants even tooting their crystal trunks, making her laugh; there was a stall that chinkled and tinkled and rang like wind through glass chimes and bells, and Maia saw a small stall absolutely festooned with flowers of every kind, and each flower was made of glass, or crystal, spun or carved, she couldn't say. There was a stall dedicated to cameras, some of which flitted around in midair snapping photographs as an example for the purveyor, who was convincing a small man in a red velvet porkpie-hat to buy a twin-lens camera. There were stalls groaning with fresh fruit and vegetables; another alongside it offering fat jars of honey and homemade jams; those stalls vending food were located near specialised shops that included cheesemongers; bakeries; patisseries; and an ice-cream parlour; tea-shops; spice-emporiums; a spotless fish-and-chip shop with exquisite tiling and a shining, thirty-foot coal-fired range.

Remus smiled at her expression, trying to take in everything at once, cricking her neck at the man selling bats of every kind; at a young woman peddling exquisitely beaded shawls of the most diaphanous silk Maia had ever seen; peeking into the downstairs office in the _Daily Prophet_ building through the window, glimpsing several witches and wizards at desks decorated with everything from schedules to family photographs to pets and flying paper-aeroplanes flittering about the ceiling, a press in the back of the long room churning out papers, several young witches and wizards piecing the papers together with their wands and binding them, handing them off to owls who swooped down from a collection of perches. There was a _very_ small shop, no larger than a broom-cupboard, stuffed to groaning with Wizard records, the tiny window displaying a very handsome, very _old-fashioned_ radio, a little poster on the door claiming they sold concert tickets; a record-player blasted a new song by the _Perfumed Gobstones_: a handsome, polished door beside the record-shop bore a sign to a fabric, rug and wallpaper shop. There were cafés with sunny umbrellas and colourful bistro chairs, and a _gelateria_; a little shop was dedicated entirely to chess-sets. There was a panelled shop in which every shelf was dedicated to bell-shaped jars of beautifully-coloured liquid, in which they custom-mixed perfumes. There was another shop in which loose teas and ground coffees were mounded in huge cones that looked like one foul breeze would send them mixing together in a fragrant hurricane. The old-fashioned Madam Primpernelle's was renowned for beautifying potions and "old-biddy" cosmetics; and a stationer's caught Maia's attention because of the beautiful papers, styluses, polished writing-boxes, and the collection of very intricate wax-seals.

There was a shop dedicated to trunks, and boxes of every kind; another shop sold cauldrons exclusively. There was a magical glassworks that threatened to enthral her, and a foul-smelling tannery. Remus had to drag her away from the window-display of particularly exquisite milliner's work; he also had to explain the game called "gobstones" when they stopped to watch a game going on between two wizards in mutton-chops and top-hats that had drawn quite a crowd. Some windows were crawling with strange creatures; some looked like they were about to explode due to the sheer mass of green, growing things in them; some featured the daintiest of strange silver instruments; one particular window showed a selection of mirrors, spinning-tops and squiggly antennae-like things. There was a mirrored shop with a beautifully painted ceiling that displayed the finest bone-china dinner services; and a potter's open workshop stuffed with lovely earthenware, some simply glazed, some beautifully painted.

From the smells and the heat, Maia was reminded of Middle-Eastern souks and perfume-markets she had visited; of the Parisian markets while she had been studying pâtisserie, everything in Diagon Alley was warm, fragrant (if not nice-smelling, as in the case of the apothecary and the tannery), but most of all it was _lively_: witches and wizards laughed and chatted, and stopped to say hello to friends, and sat outside cafés enjoying coffees and fresh _pâtisserie_; or played chess, or gobstones; alongside inherently magical shops and stalls, there were shops selling only cheese; fresh artisan breads and pastries; sweet desserts; a butcher's, and there was a fish-stall set up; and a man was calling out the names of strange fruits and vegetables Maia had never heard of, nor recognised, offering segments of orange to sample, calling to her, "Try the Fiawsbery Pear, _chéri_, they're delicious."

She watched a pair of knitting-needles click away in midair in the window of a grand-looking five-storey Georgian shop, which also featured a selection of sewing-boxes of every design stacked neatly, with a selection of pattern-books and magazines, several strings of silk embroidery-thread shimmering like bunting, and a glass cake-stand under which tiny vials of seed-beads were arranged, including one of the most exquisite little beads that glittered like starlight, and another that featured tiny beads that seemed to shine and radiate the purest golden sunlight. Her quilt of the Little Mermaid came to mind, and she gazed at the radiant star-beads.

"We can come back," Remus chuckled, touching her wrist and leading her away from the few glimpses of handmade dresses and long robes in exquisite fabrics and embroidery, to a small, rather shabby-looking shop with a single feature in the dusty window; a pillow, on which a long, thin wand rested.

"We'd best get your wand first, or you won't be able to access your family vault," Remus said, guiding her into the shop. "Padfoot has given me the money to pay for your wand." Maia blushed and glanced at Sirius, who was yawning, eyes darting everywhere in the Alley as he took in all the activity and sunshine, the heavenly scents of cheese mingling with fresh bread and pastry and melted chocolate. Maia glanced up at the peeling gold letters over the door, which read _Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C._

"Three hundred and eighty-two _B.C._?!" Maia said, turning to gape at Remus, who smiled and nodded, opening the door with a soft tinkle from a bell deep in the recesses of the dark shop; Sirius followed them inside, gaze flickering around the tiny shop, which Maia realised was panelled, not with dusty black wood as she had originally guessed, but with thousands of tiny boxes. For some reason, the back of her neck prickled, as Remus sat down carefully on the spindly chair, fiddling with his own wand; the very dust and silence in here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.

"Good afternoon," said a soft voice, and Maia jumped. An old man stood before them, his wide, pale eyes shining like moons through the gloom of the shop.

"Hello," Maia said, trying to smile; this shop was…strange. She stifled a shiver.

"Ah, yes," the man said. "Yes, yes. Professor Dumbledore informed me I would be seeing you soon. Maia Black." His pale eyes swept over Maia's face, taking in her mismatched eyes, her dark hair, her pale face. "Your uncle's image. It seems only yesterday he was in here, buying his own wand." Sirius, still in dog-form, shifted beside Remus, who reached out to pat his head absent-mindedly, watching Mr Ollivander. "Sequoia redwood, phoenix feather core, twelve and a quarter inches… Incorruptible. Very powerful duelling wand… Your _father_ left with a wand of black poplar and dragon heart-string, eleven and three-quarter inches. Very good for Defensive magic… A shame… Both very talented wizards." Maia wished the man would blink; those silvery eyes were unnerving. "Your mother, Balian, on the other hand, favoured an almond wand, unicorn tail-hair core, thirteen inches. Very nice for Charms work—well, I say she favoured it; it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course." Maia blinked very quickly, nodding, and Sirius making a soft chuffing noise drew Mr Ollivander's attention away from Maia; he saw Remus and beamed.

"Remus! Remus Lupin! How nice to see you again… Cherry, unicorn tail-hair, eleven inches, supple, wasn't it?" Remus held out his wand, which Maia saw looked to have been recently polished, as the wood glowed beautifully. Mr Ollivander ran it over his long fingers, between his knuckles, his eyes never wavering from it. "It is in very fine condition, Remus, after so long. You've taken very great care of this wand." Remus smiled as Mr Ollivander handed the wand back. "Well, now, Miss Black—let me see." He pulled a tape-measure with silver markings out of his pocket. "Which is your wand arm?"

"I'm right-handed," Maia said, glancing uncertainly at Remus, who smiled encouragingly.

"Hold out your arm, my dear. That's it." He measured Maia from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit, and round her head. As he measured, he said, "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Miss Black. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail-feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, phoenixes or dragons are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard's wand." Maia realised that the tape-measure, now taking note of the distance between her nostrils, was doing so of its own accord; Mr Ollivander was flitting around the shop, taking down boxes. "That will do," he said, and the tape-measure crumpled at Maia's feet. "Right then… Try this, Miss Black. Cinnamon and unicorn tail-hair. Just take it and give it a wave."

Shooting Remus a dubious glance, Maia bit her lip, wincing with slight embarrassment, but she had no sooner waved the wand once than Mr Ollivander had plucked it out of her hand, replacing it with—"Apple and dragon heartstring. Springy." That, too, was taken from her hands, "No, no—here, horse-chestnut and phoenix tail-feather. Nine inches, sturdy…"

Maia tried. And tried. Sirius had lain down on the floor, head on his paws, watching, as boxes of used wands mounted around him, Remus watching curiously, though Maia couldn't help wondering if he wasn't a little bored. She must have been trying wands for nearly forty minutes already at least; Mr Ollivander seemed to become happier the more wands he pulled from the shelves.

"Tricky customer," he said happily, darting about the room, collecting more boxes, and more and more boxes were opened and discarded as Maia went through them all, flushing the more Mr Ollivander went to look for others. She wondered if it was usual for Mr Ollivander to have to unpack most of his shop for a single customer. Through the last of the latest batch, Mr Ollivander paused, frowning thoughtfully, a finger curled over his chin, his great, pale eyes sweeping the boxes still unopened. His pale eyes flickered to Maia, suddenly shrewd and dark, and he made a thoughtful noise as he disappeared into the back of the shop. He returned, carrying at least ten more boxes, and had Maia go through all of them—myrtle; frankincense; rosewood; silver birch; cypress; hawthorn—until he pulled the second to last out of its box.

"Try _this_," he said, handing the wand to her with so much care Maia thought perhaps _this_ was the wand he had actually wanted her to try. Of a deep, polished red wood, it was a little longer than some of the others she had tried. Maia took the wand. A sudden warmth in her fingers spread up her arm, and Maia beamed as she raised her wand, giving it a swirling motion, and great glittering butterflies of gold and many-petalled ruby flowers exploded like a firework display, shimmering and dancing, the butterflies' wings fluttering, the scent of decadent roses lingering on the dusty air, and Remus laughed; Sirius barked; and Mr Ollivander cried, "Oh, bravo! Yes, I knew it would be so!"

Eyes glowing at her, Mr Ollivander reclaimed the wand, and smiled. "This wand was made, over ninety years ago, from the trunk of a Lebanon cedar aged at over two-thousand years old. Eternal, enduring…_Powerful_." He took the wand from Maia, who suddenly felt the chill of the shop descend now that the last of the glittering golden butterflies had melted into nothingness. Mr Ollivander gazed at her with those wide, silver eyes like vivid moons. "Very powerful. Twelve and one quarter inches. With a heartstring taken from a particularly resilient Hebridean Black, very old… A wand of extraordinary power, my dear… Very powerful duelling wand. After all this time, I find it great fortune that this wand now leaves my shop in the hands of someone who will accept the responsibility of its power."

Mr Ollivander put the wand back in its box, and at the little counter, wrapped it tenderly in brown paper. Remus handed over seven galleons for it, and Mr Ollivander bowed them out of the shop, still smiling at Maia. His words ringing through Maia's head, she glanced at Remus, thanking him for paying for the wand on behalf of Sirius.

"I'm sorry that took so long," she said quietly, but Remus just smiled.

"There is no point buying a wand if you don't do it properly," he said. "As Mr Ollivander said, you don't get the same results with another wizard's wand. Every wand is specific to a single person."

"What's a Hebridean Black?"

"It's one of two dragon breeds native to Britain," Remus said. "The Hebridean Black and the Welsh Green."

"There are dragons, here in Britain?"

"Most wizards go their entire lives without ever seeing one personally," Remus said. "They're heavily protected by wizard poaching laws, and they're so powerfully magical that any wizard who stumbled across one, even by accident, wouldn't stand a chance, unless he managed to catch it off guard, and got a good Conjunctivitis Curse in before he could escape… But, if the rumours are true, we may witness a dragon in captivity." His expression turned saddened as he indicated the way to the steps of the white-marble building, a towering structure that dominated the skyline this end of the Alley: it was Gringott's, and the warning stamped into the plaque on the first set of doors made Maia shiver.

While Remus showed her through the doors, Sirius had remained outside, in the sunshine. Sirius had explained about goblins; she had listened to Amos Diggory and Bill Weasley talk about how shrewd they were, but her only exposure to goblins of any kind were those found in the chasms of Moria in _The Fellowship of the Ring_. These goblins were something else entirely; short, but with very long, clever fingers and shrewd eyes, finely garbed. The great marble hall into which they were bowed by two other liveried goblins featured high rows of desks, and while some goblins neatly scribbled in ledgers, others drew carts heaped with rubies the size of Maia's fists across the room, and still yet more guided customers to the numerous doors leading off the main chamber.

"Up here, I think," Remus said, indicating, and they approached what appeared to be the head goblin, for his desk was the highest, and overlooked the entire hall. Clearing his throat softly, Remus said, "Miss Maia Black wishes to make two withdrawals." The goblin glanced up, turning shrewd dark eyes on Maia. "One from vault six hundred and sixty-nine, and one from the de Lusignan vault." The goblin stared from Remus to Maia.

"There is only one who may withdraw from the de Lusignan vault," he said, turning those sharp black eyes on Maia once again. "Never has she accessed it." Maia glanced from the goblin to Remus.

"I, er…just bought my first wand," she said softly, remembering what Sirius had said about wand-identification being needed to access the oldest vaults. The goblin stared at her.

"Allow me to examine it," he said, proffering his hand. Maia bit her lip, but carefully untied the string Mr Ollivander had knotted around the box he had given her. Just taking it into her hand again, her wand spread warmth to the tips of her fingers and toes, giving her the strangest sensation that she was being hugged and taking a shot of whisky-courage at the same moment, and her back straightened as she handed her wand over, though she never took her eyes off it as the goblin examined it, weighing it with a strange piece of apparatus that issued a little note of paper, which the goblin read, frowning thoughtfully. After what seemed an age, he handed the wand back. Releasing the breath she had not realised she had been holding, Maia reclaimed the wand—realising for the first time that there were tiny odd symbols engraved around the handle—and tucked it safely into its box.

"That is in order," the goblin said. "And the key to vault six hundred and sixty-nine?" Trying not to smirk over the fact that Sirius had chosen a vault with the number _69 _in it, so close to _666_, she produced from her tiny bag the little key Sirius had given her before they had set out from Grimmauld Place; the goblin examined the key, nodded, snapped his fingers, and a second goblin approached seemingly out of nowhere. They conversed quietly, and the first goblin handed Maia Sirius's key, and the second goblin bowed them through a little door after retrieving a strange set of instruments that looked rather ominous.

Quite unexpectedly, they were not shown through into another marble hall, or little offices: instead, something akin to a claustrophobic mining tunnel had been carved out of the earth, and it was chill and dark once the door closed. Remus handed her into the little cart, and advised Maia to hold on, if nothing else, to the box inside which her wand was safely stowed. She did so, and soon let out a shriek of sheer, unadulterated delight: Sirius had failed to warn her that riding a cart through the caverns of Gringott's was like riding the best roller-coaster at Universal Studios in Florida—a place Maia had been lucky enough to be invited to by a school-friend: she _loved_ the rollercoaster called The Hulk, the biggest in the entire theme-park.

The difference was that The Hulk had had safety-harnesses to make sure you didn't fall out, and as Remus had warned, Maia nearly lost her life, let alone her wand and her wicker-basket. Despite that, she couldn't stop laughing, and by the time the goblin stopped the cart outside "Vault number six hundred and sixty-nine. Key, please", Maia staggered out of the cart, wiping her eyes on the backs of her hands, still laughing, exhilarated and weak-kneed. She found the key and handed it over, and with the sound of many clicks and the grind of metal, the door opened.

Beyond, heaps of coins glittered; gold, silver, bronze. Great heaps of them, as well as a vast quantity of what looked like antiques, and trunks; and the kind of _stuff_ that accumulated in the hands of a young man with unfettered freedom and a vast amount of wealth, kept safe here for the last fourteen years after a war had rendered this vault the safest place for his treasures. Sirius had very specific instructions, and Remus helped identify the two trunks and the large box he wanted brought back to Grimmauld Place. Maia didn't know what was in them, but Remus shrank them to little larger than snuffboxes and set them in her basket, and he motioned to Maia to look at the huge bookcase stuffed with books and trinkets, and those were added to the basket.

Another journey through the chasms of Gringott's—reminding Maia very strongly of _Khazad-Dum_ and making her wonder about Balrogs as they plunged into air that became closer and colder—had Maia shivering in her little shorts and sleeveless camisole, and they passed under a waterfall that made her shudder; however, they emerged completely dry, and the cart continued on. Then things got quiet, and even colder. As they climbed out of the cart, Maia glanced around, because the tracks had stopped. They had to continue on foot, and it was then that the goblin retrieved those eerie instruments.

When something roared up ahead, perhaps sensing their nearness, the goblin started to shake the instruments, and Maia clapped her hands over her ears. They made a horrendous racket, and Remus also winced as he pressed his hands to his ears, but he guided her after the goblin, who was making his way steadily on. When the passage opened up, Maia realised what had roared.

A dragon.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review. Oh, and please check out _Perpetual Underestimation_, a twin-Harry fic, with a varying timeline; Remus appears in the first chapter, on the Knight Bus! Anyway, I'm loving the _Kingdom of Heaven_ soundtrack…and I _really_ need to stop watching Hairy Bikers and Rachel Khoo cooking-programmes!


	7. Chapter 07

**A.N.**: I loved writing about all these shops; and about Maia's buying-binge in Flourish and Blotts. I'm a bit like that with books! Not as bad as Hermione though.

Again, I'm in _DH_-denial, so everything after Dobby appears in Malfoy Manor _DOESN'T HAPPEN_! Neither does You-Know-Who returning in the graveyard; Cedric doesn't go on holiday, but Nagini did! And I have been thinking (dangerous) and have figured out how Maia is an orphan.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_07_

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><p>She felt like the air had been knocked from her lungs just as her knees threatened to buckle. A <em>dragon<em>.

But this was no dragon as Maia had ever imagined them, or seen them in that mobile in Sirius and Regulus' playroom. Whatever an ancient dragon looked like, Maia was sure this was it. An ancient dragon chained and _scarred_, scrabbling away like a frightened lizard at the horrible sounds the instruments were making. Its eyes were milky white, like the rest of its body, but in places it was also chaffed and red where the chains were cutting into its flesh; its scales were colourless, as if it had long since seen sunlight, and it roared in fright at the sound of the instruments.

Her initial shock at seeing a real, live dragon was overridden by her horror at its state. People went to jail for treating their dogs like this; what on earth possessed these goblins to keep a _dragon_ in such conditions? She bet others of its kind were _beautiful_. Her heart squeezed.

"That's not right," she whispered, and despite the noise Remus glanced at her with an expression so loaded that she knew, if he hadn't heard her, he still shared her thoughts. The goblin scared the dragon into a corner, far away from a large vault-door: pressing his entire palm to the door, it simply melted away.

Her shock over the dragon was pushed aside. Aladdin's cave had nothing on her mother's family's vault. _De Lusignan_, Remus had said. That was her mother's family-name: if her family was one of those ancient ones, their vault literally at the end of the tracks, there were only a handful of other vaults alongside hers, each so important and ancient that a _dragon_ guarded them.

Glancing inside the vault, Maia saw why. The size of a cathedral, it was _heaped_. Sirius's vault seemed as nothing to this. Gold; treasure; portraits; furniture; strange instruments; trunks overflowing with jewels, gemstones and antiques; suits of armour; a solid gold carriage; dressers filled with drawers lined with velvet and stuffed with jewellery. There were innumerable unnamed things she didn't even recognise, and would probably spend a year trying to discover the use for; but wanting to get as far away from the brutalised dragon kept at bay by the still-echoing sound of the goblin's instruments, Remus picked up a little drawstring leather bag, and helped Maia scoop handfuls of gold Galleons, silver Sickles and bronze Knuts into it. She didn't scream and yell in delight on the return ride back to the marble hall. The dragon, and the contents of her family's _enormous_ vault had jarred her mind more than a rollercoaster could.

Leaving the cool bank behind, they re-entered Diagon Alley, which was blisteringly hot and only getting warmer as they neared midday, the market crawling with witches and wizards doing their shopping, none of them caring, or realising, that miles beneath their feet was a dragon kept in brutal captivity.

"How long do you think that dragon had been there?" Maia asked, glancing at Remus, who was squinting around looking for Sirius, who had disappeared. Remus sighed, glancing at Maia.

"Difficult to say," he said. "Dragons have exceptionally long life-spans. But the way it's being kept down there like that will have affected it, too. Its eyes; you saw how they were milky?"

"They shouldn't be allowed to keep it like that," Maia said, upset. She felt ill at every thought of the dragon; she had never liked watching RSPCA clips, and she told Remus about an episode of _Country File_ she had watched where they had investigated badger-baiting. She burst out, "God, wizards are so—" She couldn't think of a word bad enough, but her feelings over the mistreatment of that dragon, and Sirius telling her of the way wizards treated werewolves, goblins, house-elves and giants made her _very_ angry. Remus gave her another look that said he agreed, and his lips twitched in a smile.

"There he is," he said, nodding, and Maia glanced around to see Sirius slowly trotting over to them, tail wagging. Remus frowned. "Where's he been?" He glanced beyond Sirius, and Maia saw what looked like a small, dark alley, and Remus turned an enigmatic look at Sirius. "Learn anything?" he asked lightly, though there was a bite to his tone, and Sirius chuffed softly, staring back. He turned pale eyes onto Maia, canting his head to one side.

"We saw a dragon," Remus said quietly, and Sirius chuffed again before nosing her palm and gently licking it, glancing up at her.

"Well, where do you want to go now?" Remus asked. "Maybe I can take your mind off that dragon."

"Don't you have things you need to do?"

"No," Remus chuckled, giving her a sad smile. "How about we start with things you need for the house? It's a good idea to start redecorating the bedrooms." Sirius gently rammed his head against the backs of her knees, pushing Maia towards the polished door next to the record-shop, which led up a handsome staircase to a vast hall disproportionate to the shop's size, filled with piles of hand-woven carpets; bolts of sumptuous fabrics; shelves of wallpapers; displays of upholstered chairs. A plump witch with a pincushion strapped to her wrist and a tape-measure draped around her neck stepped forward, smiling.

"Hello. How may I help you?" she asked, her smile faltering slightly at the sight of Remus's neatly darned but obviously old robes. Maia stepped forward.

"Hi, we'd, er…well, we're completely refurbishing our house," Maia said, digging through the contents of her basket, which was still as light as it would be if empty, despite carrying a bag filled with heavy coins, and three shrunken trunks. She found the packet of watercolour paintings she had done for some of the bedrooms, the music-room, the dining-room and the library. "This is what I thought the rooms could look like, but I've got no specifics about the patterns for wallpaper and upholstery. I thought I'd have a look and see what's available."

Remus was a _very_ good sport. Though they had set out early from Grimmauld Place, it had taken nearly fifty minutes to buy her wand, and the trip through the Gringott's underground couldn't have taken less than half an hour: Remus helped pick out new Sirius-approved rugs; rolls of wallpaper; bolts of fabric to make curtains and cushion-covers, to reupholster furniture, and blackout fabric to line blinds. Then there was the picking out of sewing-threads, of buttons, curtain-ties. As Sirius had told her, purchases for which vast quantities of gold had to exchange hands was done similarly to the way online transactions were done by Muggles; the final sum of cost were tallied up, vault information was given, and Maia received a hand-written invoice, the shop proprietor keeping a copy of the receipt. Remus had helped her set everything in her basket, taking out her boxed wand and placing it on top just in case.

Back in Diagon Alley, Remus let her wander around; it seemed like he was enjoying the company, and the sunshine, and wandered around with her with his hands in his pockets, sometimes reaching down to scratch Sirius behind the ears to give the impression that Sirius was indeed their pet. Most often it was Sirius nudging her into shops to investigate, which, like the foreign shops and markets she had visited, were beyond _fascinating_. Remus tried to explain as best he could some of the things Maia found interesting; having heard of Maia's interest in photography, Remus took her into the cauldron-shop, and she came out with a size-two pewter cauldron, which the shopkeeper had said was standard use for Hogwarts students. In the apothecary, which was fascinating enough to make up for its gagging smell, Remus asked for a basic supply of potions ingredients, for a Hogwarts student, and the ingredients necessary to make potions in which to develop photograph films.

Not knowing the exact procedure for magical photograph processing, Remus thought it a good idea to go to _Flourish and Blotts_, the wizard bookshop, which had Maia's hands shaking to go and explore and devour. Mentioning that she usually picked up second-hand books, because she liked her books "pre-loved", never knowing what treasures in the form of annotations she might find, and while Remus thought that was a very good practice, he pointed out some of the dangers associated with buying second-hand magical equipment: curses, for one. Inside _Flourish and Blotts_, exchanging a look with Sirius, Remus smiled and encouraged Maia to pluck anything off the shelves that took her interest; the wicker-basket could carry it all.

Asking Maia to pick out anything she wanted in a book-shop (or a fabric-shop) was like letting an alcoholic loose in a brewery. She was doubled up, laughing, at the section on Muggle Studies: but she found a small volume on wand-lore, intrigued how she could use magic without a wand, yet everyone seemed to bear one. Sirius went around the shop, pointing his nose at several volumes; some of them were filled with joke hexes; others with fun counter-curses; Transfiguration spells; creative enchantments. Remus laughed, and tried to make her put _Curses and Counter-Curses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and much, much more)_ by Professor Vindictus Viridian back on the shelf, while Sirius made soft barking noises like he was laughing. She picked up a few magical cookbooks to add to her ever-growing collection: she also found a collection of wizarding nursery-rhymes and bedtime stories; and a few other random books she liked the look of, including one that taught her how to make cosmetics, because she had seen only Madam Primernelle's by way of a cosmetics company, and the scent of lavender and patchouli had been heavy on the air at the door, making her recoil. Remus just watched, unable to stop himself laughing at the sight of her flitting between bookcases.

"I always buy a new book when I have ten left to read," she said, blushing, but grinning apologetically, and Sirius chuffed, amused. "Pick some things out; I feel bad building up these stacks of books to buy! Maybe there's something on that legislation you're working on. Oh!" She sourced the section on _Magical Creatures_ and found several tomes on dragons; an obscure and very dusty history of house-elf enslavement; and a very slender book, almost a pamphlet, on the rights of werewolves.

"Do you know, I think you and Hermione Granger would get along very well," Remus said thoughtfully, his expression sad as he glanced over the werewolf rights book before adding it to the new stack the shop-keeper was laughing at with every new book Maia added to it.

"That's…my uncle's…godson's…friend, yes?" Maia asked, frowning as she went through the process of not giving anything away but letting Remus know who she meant.

"Yes, that is her indeed," Remus smiled. "Hermione was the brightest witch of her age I'd ever met. She's very interested in the rights of the minorities. She would be just as appalled as you by the sight of that dragon. Padfoot mentioned she's even started a society for house-elf welfare."

"Really?" Maia asked curiously, frowning. "I woke up with Kreacher looming over me," Maia admitted, "I had a sudden image of Gollum searching for his Precious." Sirius chuffed what sounded like a doggy laugh. "Padfoot said clothes are a mark of Kreacher's enslavement—he can only be freed if Padfoot or I give him clothes?"

"That's right," Remus said, glancing at Maia. He tapped the book on house-elf history that Maia had picked out. "It will all be in here. Anyway, Padfoot says you're on the Black family tapestry; you're a member of Kreacher's family, so he has to respond to any order you give him," Remus said.

"He has to follow _any_ order?"

"They keep their masters' secrets and their silence," Remus said, sounding like he was parroting something he had heard elsewhere.

"What if I told Kreacher to kill himself? Would he have to do it?" Maia asked, horrified. Remus frowned thoughtfully.

"I'm not sure. But I know house-elves have to punish themselves for disobeying a direct order," he said. Maia's eyes widened.

"_Punish_ themselves! What about, I don't know, free will?" she scowled. "I thought slavery had been outlawed centuries ago. At least in the _Muggle_ world. And wizards say they're more sophisticated echelons of evolution?" Remus chuckled softly. "What's this society you mentioned?"

"Hermione Granger's? Padfoot only mentioned it in passing, but it's called The Society for Elfish Welfare, or something along those lines," Remus said slowly, thoughtfully. Maia nodded to herself.

"I think it might be worth me writing to her," she said. "I wonder if she has any thoughts on dragon captivity."

"As to that, I'm not sure, but I'm certain Bill Weasley's brother Charlie would take issue with it," Remus said.

"Bill has _brothers_?" Maia blurted, gaping, and then remembered Tonks mentioning something along those lines.

"Five, actually," Remus smiled, chuckling at her expression as her eyes bugged. _Five_ Bill Weasleys! A slow smile lit up her features, daydreaming, thoughts of the redheaded _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers_ drifting through her head.

"Are they all as dishy as Bill?" Maia asked, practically drooling at the thought of _six_ Bill Weasleys. One alone had had her weak at the knees! Remus chuckled. "So why would Bill's brother have an issue with it? Other than it being completely deplorable."

"Charlie studies dragons, Tonks mentioned," Remus said. Maia glanced around; she had reached a section on wizarding history, but her mind was whirring. A few years ago, Diane had taken Maia to Romania, to a dragon sanctuary one of her old friends was in charge of. Maia had only seen the dragon hatchlings. Her great-aunt's friend had said it would be too dangerous for Maia to approach the adults.

She approached the bookcases dedicated to _History of Magic_. As well as a copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ and a joint-biography of its founders, she picked up copies of _Modern Magical History_; _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_; _Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century_ and a fat volume named _History's Greatest Sorceresses_.

Remembering the Dementor—she couldn't forget it—she found a set of books titled _Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts_, and asked for Remus's opinion as an ex-Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts. He assured her the books were _very_ good, and made a thoughtful noise as he glanced at the shop-keeper then at Sirius, who canted his head to one side looking at the set of books. While Maia flitted through the shelves, Remus remained with his nose in the first volume of _Practical Defensive Magic and Its Uses Against the Dark Arts_, his expression very thoughtful.

Curious about the game, Maia picked up a book called _Quidditch Through the Ages_; she had seen a photograph of her father grinning on a broom, wearing green and silver robes that Sirius had explained, when he had seen the stack of photographs from his father's study, were for the game of Quidditch. Remus, who had never played but loved the sport, taught her the positions of each of the seven players, the four balls, and went through some of the most brutal penalties he had heard of in international games. The last books she picked out were _The Homemaker's Helper_ and a slim volume called _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_, remembering Bill's recommendation to find a copy, and, remembering that Tonks' series of _Standard Book of Spells_ was missing the fourth volume, she discovered that Tonks' editions were out of date by five years, and, debating whether it was worth it or not, she held back and only purchased _Grade Four_. She asked the shop clerk for the standard textbooks assigned to Hogwarts students taking Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. Alongside Maths at sixth-form college, Diane had been teaching Maia Arithmancy and Ancient Runes since she had first learned to read; she had been raised multilingual, Diane wanting her to have the benefit of knowing multiple languages. Maia had shown an aptitude for numbers early on, and Arithmancy, far more difficult than her A-Level Maths, was incredibly difficult and very engaging. But she had been taught by Diane, not out of any textbook. Numbers and codes were some of her favourite things; she had thought of becoming a cryptologist.

"You should talk to Bill Weasley," Remus said, as they left the shop, tucking stacks of books wrapped in brown paper and string into her wicker-basket. "He worked as a curse-breaker for Gringott's before he came back to England."

"A curse-breaker?" Maia asked brightly, eyes flashing. "_Really_? They're _so_ cool! Diane took me to, um, South America, last year, and we met a lot of them, searching ancient Mayan tombs."

"Bill worked in Egypt, in the pyramids," Remus said, and Maia breathed a delighted sigh. Bill, in Egypt. _Very Indiana Jones_, she thought.

"I'm glad Diane taught me Ancient Runes and Arithmancy," Maia said softly. "That's two fewer subjects I have to catch up on."

"What else did Diane teach you?"

"Well, since we lived in the countryside, miles away from any towns, so she taught me astronomy," Maia said. "And wizarding history, though to me it was more like fairytales, since I had no access to other witches and wizards, except when they came to afternoon-tea so Diane could interview them. Languages, too; I've become fluent in several languages because Diane always spoke them to me as a child, and I have pen-friends abroad who we met whenever Diane took me on a 'sabbatical'. What subjects are offered at Hogwarts? Diane could only teach me things that didn't actively require magic."

Remus told her about the core subjects at Hogwarts, which she had to take until her O.W.L. examinations, much as kids had to stick with their subjects at GCSE, before either going into apprenticeship or applying to sixth-form colleges to sit their A-Levels.

"It sounds like the Muggle school system," she said thoughtfully. "You're supposed to sit GCSEs when you're sixteen, and A-Levels when you're eighteen; your results affect the universities you can apply and enrol with. Because I'm smart, my teachers bumped me up early, so I just sat my A-Levels, but I did more than any other student."

"More?"

"Usually you sit three, maybe four A-Levels," Maia said. "After GCSE, you choose four classes you want to continue with AS-Level; after those exams, you drop one subject, and take exams at A-Level the next year. Except I took Maths, Early and Late History, Art, Classical Civilisation and English Literature. They had to make special circumstances for my timetable, but I did it!" She smiled proudly, even more proud of the fact she'd managed to sit her exams despite Diane's rapidly deteriorating health.

"And what had you intended to do with your examination results?" Remus asked curiously.

"Well, if Diane hadn't… I mean…she was ill, so I didn't want to apply to university and leave her alone…but if she had been well, I would have applied to university," Maia said sadly. Everyone at sixth-form, students and teachers alike, had expected Maia to apply to Oxbridge and the American Ivies. She explained to Remus about the UCAS application system, the extortion of student loans thanks to the current government, and the universities. "I don't know what the equivalent would be in the wizarding world, but perhaps being accepted to Harvard, Yale, Oxford or Cambridge is equivalent to being accepted to the Auror Academy. They're the oldest and _best_ higher-education schools in the world, everyone aspires to go to them…"

"And you were expected to go to these schools?"

"I'm smart," Maia sighed, shrugging slightly. She was in the top five in the country for maths and languages, but that had come from a lifelong love-affair with numbers and travelling. "To be honest, though, even if Diane hadn't been ill, I don't know whether I'd have wanted to leave the Hobbit-hole to go and live in grotty halls-of-residence, in a huge city…" She smiled wryly to herself, _Didn't you jump at the chance to do that with Sirius_? Professor Dumbledore had said she could go back to the Hobbit-hole any time she wanted.

"In the Wizarding world, in Britain at least, we have a different system," Remus said, "though not dissimilar. During the spring term of your second year, you choose the subjects you wish to pursue on top of the core curriculum. From third year to fifth, you study those subjects, and at the end of fifth year, you sit O.W.L.s, or Ordinary Wizarding Levels. These exams can be retaken if you didn't pass, or if you didn't achieve the result you wanted, and you can also drop classes you don't wish to study further. Without specific results, you can't pass on to the next stage in that subject, which is N.E.W.T. levels. Professor McGonagall won't accept N.E.W.T. students without an Exceeds Expectations grade. Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests," he added, with a twinkling smile at Maia's confusion. "When you're seventeen—or eighteen, depending on your birth-date, you sit the N.E.W.T. exams, which will affect what jobs you can apply for. Though most of the time, students in their seventh-year will begin seeking out job opportunities throughout the year, so they can start work after leaving school."

"What about university?"

"There are no wizarding universities," Remus smiled. "There are specific areas of magic where further study is required. Tonks just qualified after three years at the Auror Academy, on top of her Hogwarts education. And wand-lore takes years to study before you can actually start making wands, which is why there are so few wand-makers, and the art is always kept within the family, much like the potters, tanners, the glassworkers. Alchemy is a particularly difficult subject that requires further study, Professor Dumbledore is renowned for his work with Nicholas Flamel. And Healers at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries require a rigorous training period. For things like curse-breaking, I'm sure there is probably an apprenticeship-period where you study others' work, to learn the ropes. Most wizards go straight into work, though. Unless you're recruited to a Quidditch team, or are in the entertainment business."

"What types of jobs are there available to wizards?" Maia asked curiously.

"Well, I'd assume there's the same as in the Muggle world," Remus said. "It all depends on your interests, and your abilities. A great many witches and wizards enter the Ministry of Magic, at least at some point or another in their careers." And he explained to Maia about the various departments in the Ministry of Magic: the Auror Office; the Wizengamot and International Confederation of Warlocks; the Department of International Magical Cooperation; the corrupt and often draconian ways of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; the highly-prejudiced and often malicious Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures; and the Department of Mysteries, which sounded like a Wizarding version of MI6.

"So…so when you're in second year, you choose lessons you'd like to study—but what if you don't choose the right ones?" Maia asked. "I can't imagine twelve-year-olds really know what they'd like to do, six years down the line. I know I want different things now than I did when I was twelve."

Remus smiled softly. "I had quite a few students, when I worked at Hogwarts, coming to me asking for advice. You get Careers Advice from your Head of House during your fifth year, so you can start to think about which subjects you need or want to continue into N.E.W.T. year for future careers. But a surprising number of students realised they hadn't been taking the right classes for what they wanted to do after school. There, I think you'll have the advantage."

"I suppose," Maia said quietly. "I thought I wanted to be a cryptologist, or become a foreign ambassador, Aunt Diane taught me a lot of languages, but now… It's all different, isn't it?"

"You have a firmer idea of who _you_ are," Remus said. "That's far more important than what magic you know. None of the other first-years will have studied any magic either."

"No, but they'll all be eleven years old," Maia said quietly, her shoulders slumping. How _mortifying_ it was going to be to sit in a class surrounded by year-sevens. She'd had enough of them as class prefect at school.

"I am certain that you are more than capable of bringing the intelligence and dedication you showed in your extra A-Level classes to your magical studies," Remus said encouragingly. "You'll be going to school with an idea of who _you_ are, and what you want to get out of your education, which is very important. You'll be more careful in choosing your O.W.L. subjects. You won't waste your time."

"Well, you say that, but what _do_ I want out of it? I have no clue about this world," Maia sighed. "What Ailith said is true; I will have a unique perspective on things because I studied at a Muggle school, but I know more about modern Israeli, Russian, South African and ancient Mayan wizards than I do about modern British wizards." And then she blurted out what was really bothering her, had been since Professor Dumbledore had first appeared at the Hobbit-hole. "I'll be _twenty-three_ by the time I leave Hogwarts!"

"And you will probably benefit from that added level of maturity," Remus said, as they lingered at a stall groaning with cheeses. Maia's hands shook, and she had to sample nearly everything—she discovered fromage blanc and grinned as she added a chilled jar of it and several chunks of cheese to her wicker-basket.

They sampled their way through Diagon Alley: honeys; artisan bread—she got into a big discussion with the head baker, about magical baking, and had to be dragged away by Remus—olives; fish (she made Remus gape as she sampled a live grey shrimp, and an oyster); went weak-kneed at a patisserie stall, where choux-pastries, cakes and tarts were icing and decorating themselves: they lunched on a loaf of savoury prune, pistachio and gruyere cake and some Butterbeer, and Remus said no visit to Diagon Alley on a summer afternoon was complete without visiting Florean Fortescue's _gelateria_.

It was a large, airy café, whitewashed and featuring a long white-marble counter, filled three-deep with the most sumptuous gelatos and sorbets Maia had ever seen: the wall behind was filled from floor to ceiling with bottles of liqueurs, sauces and syrups and square jars of toppings: chocolate- and yoghurt-covered, caramelised nuts; seeds (flavoured, candy-covered and chocolate-dipped); sweets Maia had never heard of; fruit (fresh and dried); jams, curds, honeys, dulce-de-leche; sparkling sugars and sherbets; multicoloured sprinkles; marshmallows in every flavour; edible flowers; bits of brownies, cookies, miniature cakes; and every kind of chocolate imaginable.

Mr Fortescue was, as Remus said, a very great man, and a very great wizard; he was smiling and warm, and despite his shop being busy, he greeted Maia personally, somehow knowing that Maia was Balian de Lusignan's daughter.

"You have the same shape of lips," he said, smiling affectionately at her, and Maia licked her lips shyly; she had never known that. She thought she looked more like Sirius than anyone… Walking out from behind the long marble counter, Mr Fortescue, a dishtowel tucked under his arm, his long apron smeared with sauces, talked quietly with Remus, while Maia read the label of each and every gelato and sorbet.

There were ordinary ones, like almond, peanut-butter, rhubarb, blood-orange and pistachio. But there was also violet; cockroach cluster; fig; cinnamon; something called gillywater; pumpkin; Acid Pop; rose; firewhiskey; tomato; candied-apple; Butterbeer; Fizzing Whizbee; sugar-plum; ginger; liquorice; pad Thai; avocado; brioche; hummus; apple strudel; cheese soufflé; saffron; pomegranate; beetroot; Moroccan mint tea; and mushroom. There were at least a handful of different gelatos each in some way incorporating chocolate, reminding her of a hot-chocolate shop she and Diane had visited in South America, where the chocolate had been prepared with eggs and cream and things like orange-water and spices to make a decadent drink, the way it was served in the earliest incarnations of _cacao_.

Mr Fortesque—Florean, as he asked Maia to call him—arranged a sample platter for Maia; twenty-odd different flavours, all scooped into a seamless ball little bigger than a chestnut, and she tucked away which flavours where her favourite while she made sure Sirius didn't melt the gelatos by _breathing_ all over them, his muzzle resting on the tabletop, eyes on the plate. Mr Fortesque supplied him with a little bowl of double-chocolate gelato. Sirius's eyes rolled in ecstasy as he scoffed the lot, and he lay down in the sun splashing in from the window under their table as Remus helped Maia polish off the samples, Maia suspecting that perhaps Mr Fortesque knew what—and who—the dog dozing beneath their table truly was.

"He does make a very good dog, doesn't he?" Maia said thoughtfully, glancing down at Sirius, who was dozing and completely contented to let Maia stroke his side with her foot.

"Better than his usual form, in fact. More than once, we suggested Padfoot make the change permanent," Remus said, and Maia laughed as she helped herself to the little ball of amaretto sorbet, which made her hum with delight. After their ice-creams were finished, they had to wake Sirius, and he licked his chops delightedly, his tail wagging, as they continued to meander through Diagon Alley.

Not to allow a good produce-tasting go to waste, Maia and Remus made their way from stall to stall sampling the goods being tendered: she bought some colourful Moroccan olives; a bottle of fig balsamic; a bottle of pumpkinseed oil; a bottle of pomegranate molasses—a staple in Middle-Eastern cuisine but a rarity in British cooking—a handful of the ripest figs and pomegranates she had ever seen, a parchment parcel of sticky, sweet _medjool_ dates; several little wax-paper cones of exotic spices she used for some of her favourite foreign dishes; a jar of delicately aniseed-flavoured honey; a loaf of almond honey bread; several trout for _papillote_ and a beautiful shoulder of lamb that would do for at least two meals: a slow-roasted dinner with fresh spring greens and new potatoes; and Moroccan flatbreads garnished with pomegranate arils, fresh yoghurt and a carrot and orange salad, one of her favourite lunch recipes for leftover lamb.

Maia could say one thing—well, she could say a lot of things about it—about Wizard culture; it had not lost that personal touch to food and cooking that had been lost with supermarkets: like the specialised shops in Paris, everything edible being sold in the market was being bought for that day, and she could see the vendors greeting regular customers, and the relationships they had with each other.

Remus, remembering he hadn't bought any Floo Powder—whatever that was, Maia thought—left her outside the grand-looking five-storey _Gladrag's_, so he could head to the apothecary: armed with her wicker-basket, Maia entered the shop with Sirius. She had been to Liberty London once, during a whirlwind trip only a few weeks ago to London to see a musical and a Shakespeare play, and all of the sights; this craft shop was a mixture of _Liberty London_ and _Harrods_, thrown in with a good dash of Middle Eastern perfume markets, spice-souks, a beadwork embroiderer's workshop, a milliner's and a couture atelier.

The five-storey, galleried shop was panelled, but so full to bursting that she could barely see the polished walls. Bolts of fabric in the most lustrous colours and fantastical fabrics she had ever seen were arranged—everything from mounds of sumptuous velvets to floaty chiffons, the most diaphanous silks and heavy, beautiful jacquards, all sold for a song! Strange and beautiful robes with Arabian influences, decorated with thousands of glittering beads and shimmering threads of gold and silver were arranged on dress-forms; a section devoted to the most curious collection of hats she had ever seen—wide-brimmed bonnets, little pork-pie hats decorated with so many trimmings she could barely see the brim, top-hats and bowlers, flat straw hats and velvet poke-bonnets, even a selection of pointed hats that glittered with diamonds and moonstones and some topped with stuffed animals. None of the hats were _normal_; very few browns or blacks at all: everything came in the most exotic and decadent of colours and fabrics, with the most imaginative of trimmings: if Maia had had any weddings to go to, she would _definitely_ have come here.

She watched a set of self-knitting needles, then went through the polished cubbyholes dedicated to yarns of every kind and colour; spools of silk embroidery thread shimmered in one section; jars of beads of every kind imaginable glittered on one entire floor; and ribbons, lace and braided cord dangled from the ceilings; sewing-boxes of every design were stacked neatly with pattern-books and magazines; odds and ends arranged on tables draped with hand-embroidered, beaded tablecloths; while dress-forms featured examples of diaphanous crochet; knitted garments and handmade lace. There were sections devoted to patterns; a section of one floor devoted to accessories and patterns for making dolls' clothes. She came out with new yarn for a cardigan; three spools of silk embroidery-thread; a tiny vial of those exquisite little seed-beads that glittered like starlight in the dark, the perfect finishing touch for her _Little Mermaid_ quilt, which was set at dusk.

She had picked out several different fabrics, beautifully-soft hundred-percent cottons printed with different floral patterns, like colourful little birds amongst pink blossoms; dreamy Van Gogh-style water-lilies in decadent violet, lilac and rose-pink; powder-blue violets on a pale-lilac background; sprays of large roses on a sunny yellow background; lily-of-the-valley embroidered on fuchsia linen; a sky-blue cotton printed with sunflowers and other little flowers in hints of white, pale-pink and violet; dreamy iridescent jellyfish embroidered onto ivory organza; a pretty violet-and-blue check on the palest rose background; a pale-blue cotton subtly printed with darker check and with tiny sprigs of cornflowers; fuchsia linen printed with sunset-orange and ruby irises with smoky leaves; and a dusty pale-pink cotton printed with tiny fuchsia aces and delicate little pink spray-roses, the leaves embroidered in sage-green. She found one pale olive-green fabric printed with different types of kites, the beribboned tails embroidered; and a pale-pink check embroidered with tiny bees; a flocked-chiffon of sunny yellow embroidered with tiny white dots. She found a last bolt of cotton printed with numerous different types of daffodils, so vibrant she had to take away a length for a spring dress; with a pink-and-ivory hounds-tooth; Moroccan-tile fuchsia cotton; and a length of white cotton woven with little pale-pink polka-dots and printed with mod flowers in sunny yellows and delicate green stalks and leaves; and a length of dark-teal silk printed with silvery-white French harps. She found a pea-green chevron; and sage cotton printed with tiny frogs she planned to embroider with spray-roses, before Remus discovered her, and she scuttled to the till with her head bowed, shoulders hunched, blushing.

Remus just chuckled, saying that her aunts had been gluts for fashion, had known how to make their own clothes, were famous for dressing alike in childhood and wearing the most sumptuous dressrobes in early-adulthood; and Maia felt a little better about the amount of fabric she had bought, considering the fact she intended to make dresses and skirts out of all of it, using alterations to the pattern she had designed, modified for a subtle, flirty Fifties feel. As they exited Gladrag's, Remus showed her the wax-paper cone of Floo Powder he had purchased in the apothecary, and explained about the Floo Network between wizarding fireplaces.

Sirius dragged her across the Alley to the little wizard record-shop, where she got into an argument with the Muggle-born owner about radios, and Johnny Cash, but came away with a free record by _The Proverbial Thunderbolt_, because she bought about thirteen others. Sirius rammed his head against the backs of her knees when she didn't move fast enough to a shop called _Gambol & Jape's_, which was filled with every kind of magical joke-item and trick imaginable, and had a _very_ good-looking twenty-year-old working behind the counter.

Inside, there were tricks and jokes to satisfy the world's most mischievous minds. And it seemed like a special kind of paradise for Sirius, given what Maia had heard of his antics at Hogwarts. She examined the text on tiny packets of powder—_Bulbadox_—and her eyes watered as she watched a display of "wet-start, no-heat" fireworks; Maia got attacked by a pair of sugar-tongs that didn't come off her nose until the young wizard behind the counter chuckled and tapped them; Remus had descended into giggles and was of no help whatsoever.

Saved by the good-looking twenty-something saleswizard, Maia rubbed her nose and examined a display of disgustingly entrancing soaps made of things like frogspawn, cockroach larvae and one that looked suspiciously like dung; and a display of sweets in jars: some of them made you swear every time you opened your mouth; others made one's hair change colour; others were Hiccough Sweets; one gave you boils. Upon consumption of the sunflower-yellow sweets, one would promptly sprout a vast quantity of gold-cupped yellow daffodils from each nostril, as the saleswizard demonstrated to general applause. Maia turned to investigate the labels of the jars of other sweets, before Remus led her over to a display of what looked like glass _dreidel_.

"_Sneakoscopes_," she read, glancing at the neatly-scripted label.

"_This_ one goes off whenever a teacher is close," Remus smiled reminiscently, picking up a little plain glass one, and Maia took it and peered at it; around the little bit of glass you were supposed to use to spin it, there were some tiny runes.

"How can they tell?" she wondered curiously. She turned shrewd eyes on him. "And how do you know?"

"Had one," Remus smiled, but his features turned sad. "My dad gave me one. He sent me off to Hogwarts with some Chocolate Frogs, a packet of Bulbadox powder, a Sneakoscope, a bag of dungbombs and a little box of Dr Filibuster's fireworks. Padfoot and James and I went through them within the first week. Our first detention was polishing the silver in the Trophy Room… The old caretaker would say, 'Polish the trophies until they shine. It'll give you time to reflect on what you've done.' There was a fire in that room…James used to bring food snuck from the kitchens…I always quite enjoyed it." Maia chuckled, and Sirius snorted softly, letting out a little bark, and they left the shop with a basketful of things at which Sirius had given low, wolfish growls that might have been chuckles of amusement.

Reminded that Maia had expressed a vague desire to write to Hermione Granger about her elf-rights society, Remus took her into a stationery shop, filled with the most astoundingly beautiful papers, inks and quills she had ever seen. There were stunning writing-boxes; a wall dedicated to wax-seals, and a little sign saying they could be commissioned; staggeringly beautiful coloured spun-glass, silver and even solid-gold dip-pens; displays of feather quills that ranged from common plain quills to vivid peacock tail-feathers and ostrich plumes.

The last stop they went into, Sirius had to remain outside the door, though his nose poked over the threshold, whining softly.

The displays even more dazzling than those in _Gambol & Jape's_, the shelves featured not joke-gobstones and Sneakoscopes that alerted parents' approaches, but shelves upon shelves of the most succulent-looking sweets imaginable. She stared around at everything with her hands pressed to her glowing cheeks, Gene Wilder's voice singing softly in her head, "_Hold your breath, count to three… Come with me, and you'll be in a world of pure imagination_…" The scent of melted chocolate was so tangible it hit Maia as soon as she walked in.

Creamy chunks of nougat; shimmering coconut-ice; fat toffees; and hundreds of kinds of chocolate-bars in neat rows; there were shining barrels of Fizzing Whizbees and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans; sugar-dusted vats of Turkish delight, proper stuff that would've been found in the Middle-East, not the Cadbury monstrosities; honey-oozing piles of baklava; columns of boxed Chocolate Frogs; little tins of sugared butterfly-wings; jars of exploding bonbons; a row of fat jars featured a rainbow display of different-flavoured Drooble's Best Blowing Gum in the shapes of each flavour fruit; there were tiny black Pepper Imps; Ice Mice; peppermint creams shaped like toads; sugar-quills; beautiful handcrafted chocolates; crystallised fruit; dainty choux petit-fours; boiled sweets of every flavour; Fudge Flies; fat chocolate balls stuffed with clotted cream and jam, liqueurs, peanut-butter; lollies; shimmering jars of sherbet; bottles of pumpkin fizz; cockroach cluster; liquorice wands; jelly slugs.

There was a display of edible inks, edible dip-pens, and flavoured lipsticks: they both came in the flavours Fizzing Whizbee; sugared violets; gingerbread; candied kumquats; Butterbeer; treacle-pudding; crème brûlée; pistachio; peonies; butter-popcorn; bonbons; chocolate; toffee-apple; chocolate bread-and-butter pudding; peanut-butter; firewhiskey; blackcurrant and liquorice; cake-batter; pumpkin-cheesecake; candied-violet marshmallow; cherry-Butterbeer; spiced peaches; raspberry; butterscotch-schnapps hot-chocolate and sugared butterfly-wings.

There was also a display of thin vellum-like papers, each edible, and pots of edible paints to go with them; there were displays of mints of every kind; miniature piñatas the shape of golden balls with sinuous silver wings, and dragons, which exuded a disproportionate amount of treats when they burst open; there were fantastic mute fireworks that showered glittering displays, which turned into solid sweets as they reached the ground, to the delight of the children swarming around the display; there were fantastic scratch-and-sniff and lickable cards; strings of glittering gumdrops draped across the ceiling, with mobiles of great jawbreakers and colourful, flavoured caramel-coated balls of marshmallow mousse; animated, giant gummy teddy-bears were having a picnic with a tea-set made entirely of spun-sugar; enormous strawberry-scented spun-sugar toadstools featured little wells of fluffy, flavoured mousse—raspberry, violet, peanut-butter, strawberry, lemon; candy-canes of every colour were hooked on every surface; there were bottles of liquid that blew iridescent pink, purple and blue caramel bubbles; sugared fig-like fruits that opened up to hearts of raspberry-coloured seeds like pomegranates but had strawberry-like flesh; there were edible chess-sets; fat, glittering sugarplums; a dainty-flowered plant on the counter that grew strawberries, raspberries and blackcurrants together in sparkling, strange, chewy boiled-sweets.

At the back of the little shop, a counter displayed exquisite handmade chocolates, and jars on the wall boasted every kind of chocolate-chip and chunk imaginable; it was here that a little cauldron was used to melt any combination of chocolate chips, combined with any choice of additions from the entire shop, into a perfect, custom-made chocolate-bar.

At the counter, she saw a little sign saying that they offered sweet-making classes in the upstairs kitchen, and she picked up a pamphlet, which included an owl-order reservation-form; there was a stack of owl-order catalogues; and already there was a little sign reminding people about planning their custom advent-calendars. She took a copy of each.

Hyperactive just on the scent of the chocolate pervasive in the little shop, Maia giggled as she and Remus staggered out of the shop, both laden down with chocolate and sweets, having punctured a little hole into the soft purple, blackcurrant-flavoured caramel-candy shell of a ball of fluffy violet marshmallow mousse and sucking it out like she would the juice of an orange—Remus said this was the only way to eat such sweets. Remus gave Sirius a shard of Fizzing Whizbee brittle, which kept him happy as they walked back down Diagon Alley, pausing at the last of the stalls that were gradually beginning to pack up their wares, and they made their way through the Leaky Cauldron, back into Muggle London.

Everything, despite the blistering sunshine, which Maia suspected had burned her nose, looked dismal in comparison to Diagon Alley. Sirius was in very high spirits as he gambolled and cavorted around on their walk back to Grimmauld Place, where he crept up and pounced on a rather ugly alley-cat, making it streak away in terror; his good mood didn't even diminish as they entered number twelve, and as soon as they were in the hall, Sirius the man emerged, grinning from ear to ear, looking far younger and more handsome than Maia had yet seen him.

There came the scampering of feet, and Kreacher emerged from the kitchen stairs. But not the Kreacher Maia had left this morning, hiccoughing over his Black family-crest stickpin. The difference in his appearance was startling; he was almost unrecognisable. The masses of hair protruding from his ears was now as clean and fluffy as cotton-wool; the buttoned pillowcase rested on his thin little frame, the stickpin shining at his shoulder, and he whistled between his teeth as he took Remus's jacket and hung it up in the cupboard concealed in the panelling of the hall.

Sirius looked like he had been hit in the face with an anvil, he was so shocked. From what Maia had heard him tell of Kreacher, he was basically everything Sirius hated about his family distilled into one skinny, unpleasant little creature who delighted in muttering the tale of Sirius's expulsion from the house under his breath, at least until Maia had arrived.

"Master Sirius, Professor Dumbledore is desirous of your counsel in the library," Kreacher croaked. "He has a new member of the Order to whom he wishes to introduce you."

Sirius stared at Kreacher with the most comical expression; part gobsmacked, a little unnerved, and mostly stunned.

"New member?" Remus said delightedly, and Sirius made a curious noise; Sirius recovered from his shock long enough to open the library-door, knocking politely, before entering; Maia remained by the doorframe, peeking into the room. Professor Dumbledore, his beard and long hair glowing brilliantly silver in the sunshine pouring through the bare, open windows, wore a long, splendid set of embroidered robes, and spoke to a broad, forbidding-looking witch with a square-jaw, short grey hair and a monocle. The witch glanced up, at once very stern-looking and rather intimidating. Her monocle fell out when her eyes clapped on Sirius.

"_Sirius Black_!" She had a deep, booming voice that made Maia jump.

"Ah, Remus, Sirius, I was just explaining to Amelia," Professor Dumbledore said, smiling sanguinely.

"Madam Bones," Remus nodded politely. Madam Bones remained staring at Sirius.

"You will recall what I said, Amelia," Professor Dumbledore said pleasantly. Sirius, sighing in apparent frustration when Madam Bones' hand twitched towards her robes, inevitably to the wand concealed within the folds, Maia thought, folded up the left sleeve of his shirt, which Maia found odd, as it was completely bare.

"I am no spy," he said, calmly, though with some bite. Maia knew one of the worst things Sirius had had to endure was everybody's belief that he would _ever_ have betrayed his best-friends.

"Amelia and I were just discussing the serious miscarriage of justice regarding your lack of a trial, Sirius," Professor Dumbledore said lightly.

"I was senior undersecretary to Millicent Bagnold at the time," Madam Bones said, in her booming voice. "You weren't the first not to receive trial. It's true, then, you are innocent." It wasn't a question. Sirius rolled his sleeve back down. "We must talk!" Madam Bones boomed. "You have not been _here_, this entire time, in this house?"

"No, I was abroad for several months," Sirius said calmly. "I returned to England just after the Dark Mark appeared at the Quidditch World Cup."

"Sirius has been keeping tabs on his godson's safety," Professor Dumbledore said mildly. Madam Bones peered curiously at Sirius.

"All this for your godson?!" she boomed. "Remarkable!" Maia shifted at the doorframe, and the woman's eyes flitted to her, as did Professor Dumbledore's.

"Ah, Maia!" Professor Dumbledore smiled. "I trust you have had a good day. I received a letter from Mr Ollivander mere hours ago. You have purchased a wand!"

"Lebanon cedar and the heartstring from a Hebridean Black _dragon_," Maia beamed, tugging the box out of her wicker-basket and hastily unwrapping it; warmth spread to her fingertips when she clasped the handle of her wand, and in the deep golden sunlight, the red wood glowed almost garnet-rich.

"Very fine wand!" Madam Bones boomed, her monocle back in place.

"Amelia—this is Maia Black. She recently received a warning from your department for turning a Muggle boy into an octopus and back," Professor Dumbledore said, smiling, his eyes twinkling.

"Did he break the wand during the incident?" Madam Bones asked, frowning.

"Er—no, this is my first wand," Maia said. Madam Bones' monocle was threatening to disappear under her thick eyebrow. "I didn't have a wand when I turned William into the octopus."

"How old are you, girl?"

"Fifteen," Maia said. Madam Bones shot Professor Dumbledore an inquisitive glance.

"Maia has attended a Muggle school, Amelia," he explained softly. "Her great-great-aunt Diane de Lusignan raised her since childhood—however, Maia is currently under my guardianship. Though her recently-discovered uncle, Sirius, has invited her to live here with him."

"And with you, Mr Lupin?" Madam Bones shot at Remus, who nodded. "Heard excellent things from my niece, Susan."

"Ah, Susan," Remus smiled warmly. "She's a very sweet girl."

"Said you're the only Defence Against the Dark Arts professor worth having," Madam Bones boomed, and Maia saw Remus positively beam. Madam Bones glanced at Maia again. "Will you be helping Miss Black with her Defence?" Remus glanced at Maia, eyebrows raised, as if he had just thought of that very same thing.

"I don't see why I couldn't," he said, smiling softly, and glanced at Professor Dumbledore. "While I'm not working, of course."

"And that's my cue to leave," Maia said, smiling, and Professor Dumbledore's eyes twinkled as he gave her a little bow; she closed the door behind her, leaving the adults to talk about Order business, and lugged her wicker-basket upstairs to the first-storey gallery, the most open space in the house besides the drawing-room.

Carefully, Maia started to empty the contents of the wicker-basket onto the gallery floor. Sirius's trunks were set on the low, large round polished table for Remus to return to their original sizes. She hadn't had a clear visual of just how much they had actually bought; when everything had been neatly stacked (in the case of her _astounding_ number of books, which came to five precarious but neat columns three foot high each) or arranged (as was the case with the wax-paper cones of spices and herbs), piled up (the carpets and wallpaper and bolts of fabric—both for upholstery and for her clothes) and propped up against the walls (the vividly beautiful record-sleeves), and arranged on the table (i.e. the _Gambol & Jape's_ products, the little bits she had picked up from _Gladrag's_, and the _copious_ amounts of sweets) she realised she now stood over a veritable hoard of Smaug-like proportions.

Thinking about what Madam Bones had said—asking whether Remus would teach her any Defence Against the Dark Arts while she lived here—she glanced at the _Standard Book of Spells, Grade Four_ which she had purchased, and thought about how children who _didn't_ attend Hogwarts were taught; at home, in their own time. She wondered whether she could…catch up. Catch up to where she _should_ be, or at least work her way through some of the earlier stages of the Hogwarts educational system, so that come September, she didn't have the full seven years to catch up on.

She had already been studying Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Astronomy and History of Magic for years; surely homeschooled children sat exams somewhere, so they had the right credentials. Perhaps she could take exams to go into the O.W.L. year in those subjects when she went to Hogwarts this September?

She would have to talk to Professor Dumbledore about it.

The little book on house-elf history caught her eye, and Maia remembered what Remus had said; Kreacher was bound to obey the summons and orders of anyone in the Black family, therefore, all Maia had to do was call him.

"Kreacher?" she said tentatively. With a soft _crack_, the house-elf appeared, sweeping a low bow.

"Mistress Maia called?" he croaked.

"Er, yeah… You know, you don't have to bow to me," Maia said, flushing embarrassedly. "I was hoping you could help me sort out all this stuff…" She indicated the carpets, the rolls of wallpaper and the bolts of fabric, the stuffing for upholstery, and the filling she had bought for seat-cushions and the window-seats in some of the bedrooms. She and Remus had purchased a lot of high-quality pillows, cushions, new duvets and bolsters for the house, and the cushions and bolsters needed covers sewn, just as she needed to get started on the blinds and curtains she wanted to make.

Kreacher helped Maia carry the carpets to each of the rooms, and to unroll them; none of the carpets were so large that they obscured the intricate inlaid parquet detailing around the edges of the room, but each rug was handmade and sumptuous.

Kreacher helped her separate the wallpaper, fabric, the coverless throw-cushions, bolsters and window-seat cushions into each of the bedrooms. The packets of spices, the vast amount of cheese, fromage-blanc, the lamb, trout, fruit and other foodstuffs were moved downstairs by Kreacher, who merely snapped his fingers, making it all disappear, and Maia picked out some of the books she wanted to have a look through before Kreacher snapped his fingers once again, and her books, new records, the tiny starlight seed-beads and _Gambol & Jape's_ products disappeared.

It seemed that while she, Sirius and Remus had been out, Kreacher had definitely not been idle: last night, he had been the one who had washed the green lamps in the galleries until they shone; and once downstairs in the kitchen, Maia realised he had been the one who had been polishing the silver, because the long table was covered with glinting, shining silver pieces.

While the adults were in the library, Kreacher showed her around the house, his deep, bullfrog voice almost jubilant as he showed her the linen-cupboard in which she had found that massive infestation of pinkish fungus: it had been scrubbed spotless, and now, the laundry Maia had stripped from every room was pristinely-laundered, freshly ironed, and neatly arranged on the shelves, ready to be divvied out amongst the bedrooms once the mattresses were set in the washed, polished bed-frames.

Having eavesdropped on Sirius's conversations with Professor Dumbledore about her, Kreacher had gleaned enough to know Maia hadn't actively studied magic, and knew little of British wizarding culture, therefore he showed her some of the things that Maia wouldn't know about: he showed her the frozen eggs of an ashwinder, which would have set the whole house aflame if left unattended, and were used in potions: he told her the greenish fungus in an upstairs bathroom, which she had suspected of eyeing her up as a tasty treat, was a Bindimun, and had gotten rid of it completely. And, asking how Kreacher had eavesdropped on Sirius, Kreacher shame-facedly showed Maia a network of cupboards, cubby-holes, hidden compartments, and even a network of narrow secret passages throughout the house, all of which he had used, in days past before Maia had met him, to avoid Sirius and Remus.

It was through Kreacher showing her the secret cupboards and doors in the panelling of the bedrooms that Maia discovered the sources of the scuttling, pattering, squeaking, oozing noises that punctuated the dead of night. Armed with _One Thousand Magical Plants and Fungi_, Remus's book on household pests and her newly-purchased _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ book, she helped Kreacher get rid of every infestation they could find. Kreacher was an aficionado on the house, having lived there since before Sirius had been born, and it seemed he gained more vigour the more Maia asked him to help her do things.

While they had been in Diagon Alley, Kreacher had been cleaning; leading her proudly up to the third-storey, she saw that the playroom and the bedrooms beside her own were all spotless. He had followed her example in the other rooms in tearing up the carpets, stripping the walls of peeling paper, and window-frames of rust and cracked paint; and the marble fireplaces and engraved wooden mantelpieces shone vibrantly, treated and polished; the panelling was highly-polished, and the one portrait Sirius had been asked to save from their scourge by Professor Dumbledore was, Kreacher said, in the process of being restored, much to the delight of its subject.

The _Singer_ sewing-table Maia had salvaged from one of the rooms had been polished and cleaned until it glowed, and now stood in the first-floor gallery: Kreacher had relined the backgammon table with a length of forget-me-not blue velvet, and polished each of the chips until they glowed.

Clapping a hand to her forehead, Maia realised she had forgotten to buy _paint_ to redo the window-frames. She made a note of it, with a mind to go back to Diagon Alley tomorrow morning, perhaps.

She had never taken Textiles at school: everything in her home had been handmade. Maia could knit in her sleep; she could crochet, make _lace_, do the most exquisite beadwork and embroidery, make her own clothes and, as now, could make button-up and tie-up blinds, cushion-covers and fully-lined curtains.

Sirius had suggested redecorating her own room first: having heard that Mrs Weasley would be bringing her children to the house in a few weeks, and expecting other company on and off, as the headquarters for the Order, Maia thought a better idea would be to get the spare bedrooms redecorated before their arrival, when she was sure it would be more difficult to get things done tidily: she was a bit of a stickler when it came to redecorating: Maia liked to do things herself, found it easier that way, with her own system and no one interfering.

The lady at the shop had measured the fabric to Maia's exact requirements, and cut the pieces, including the black-out lining (Maia believed Remus was a saint, due to his patience during that time-consuming process), and since Kreacher had helped separate out the envelopes of buttons and other fiddly bits into each room, as well as the threads she would use, Maia started with the first room on the first-storey, the one closest to the drawing-room and to the upstairs door that led into the library, which she was going to turn into the music-room. Kreacher had done an expert job on the sewing-table, cleaned as if it had never been used: after Kreacher had brought down the tuned grand-piano, the half-dozen chairs and an elegant little chaise from the music-room, Maia sewed the new tie-up blinds, and, closing the piano-lid, she draped the completed blinds and the fully-lined, weighted curtains across the top. She had to wait for Sirius and Remus to help her do the wallpapering, but Kreacher snapped his fingers, and a jug of rhubarb lemonade, garnished with chunks of apple, fresh white-raspberries and mint, and some of the fresh honey-almond loaf spread with butter, appeared for Maia to have a rest and a break, before turning to the six polished chairs and the little chaise that needed reupholstering.

"This is actually a very handsome room," she said, licking fresh butter from her finger as she sat, cross-legged, on the new golden-beige rug touched with deep, light cocoa-browns and a few splashes of scarlet, in the sun blistering in from the open windows. With the new carpet, she could already see, with the polished panelling, the piano and the soft champagne fabric she was about to reupholster the chairs and chaise with, that once the walls were papered, and the cabinets from the room upstairs filled with sheet-music were cleaned and organised, this room would be a wonderful place to retreat to when the mood struck her to play. She thought about bringing out her aunt's vertical piano to accompany the grand, and keeping her painted pianoforte in her room.

She didn't think Kreacher had ever been asked to share a meal with someone from his family before; he gaped at her when she offered him some of the fresh bread, and sat with his glass trembling in his hand as he had some of the lemonade.

Working on the last of the chairs and the chaise, the others polished, and neatly reupholstered, Kreacher hovering as he washed the ceiling, having already completely scoured the chandelier, which shone and glittered in the sun, sending slivers of dazzling light onto the rug and walls, Maia heard Sirius call, "Maia?"

Lips parted to call back, a sudden shriek of Banshee-like proportions filled the downstairs; "_Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers_!" Maia clapped her hands to her ears.

"Need to get her off the wall!" she grimaced, and Kreacher snapped his fingers once. Silence rang; looking utterly perplexed, Sirius mounted the stairs, shooting glances at the moth-eaten curtains that concealed the portrait of his mother, and he stumbled onto the gallery, which featured his three shrunken trunks on the table at the top of the stairs, and the _Singer_ sewing-table surrounded by neatly-cut fabric, little brown-paper bags of buttons and threads for the next room Maia was going to start on. Maia waved from inside the new music-room, and Sirius' jaw dropped as he entered the room, taking in the polished piano with the new blinds and curtains draped over it, ready to be hung, the freshly reupholstered chairs, the chaise, the sparkling chandelier, the cushion for the piano-stool she had just finished sewing the cover for.

"You've been busy," he said, eyes wide. Maia smiled as he gazed around.

"Bit different to what you remember it?" she guessed, chuckling, and Sirius laughed.

"_Very_ different," he said, glancing down with wondrous eyes as he examined the pattern around the edge of the rug, before stepping onto it.

"I realised that I'd forgotten to pick up some paint," Maia said, gesturing to the windows. "For the frames. I thought I could head back to Diagon Alley tomorrow and pick some up, after I feed the chickens."

"Er…aren't you going to have a lie-in or spend the day listening to music, or lying in the sun doing absolutely nothing?" Sirius asked, giving her a perplexed look. "You're a teenager. You're supposed to be a layabout." Maia shrugged. "We could head to the beach, too, pick some more muscles."

"We?"

"You're not going un-chaperoned," Sirius said, with a wolfish grin. The ultimate irony; _Sirius_ chaperoning anybody.

"Well, that'll be good," Maia nodded. "Mrs Weasley _does_ say you need more sunshine."

"And you, more fresh air," Sirius remarked. "And a fatter waistline. You coming down? We'll have some tea before the other Order members get here."

"Just let me finish this last chair, and I'll be down," Maia said, but Sirius remained, watching, as she finished reupholstering the last seat, screwed it back into the chair, and set the six finished chairs beside each other along one wall, beside the elegant little chaise.

"You keep going on at this pace, you'll have this entire house redecorated before the fortnight's out," Sirius chuckled. "You'll have nothing to do the rest of the summer."

"That's not true. I've still got my vegetable-garden, the orchard, the girls, my bees, and I've got to keep you and Remus fed," Maia smiled. "And I _do_ have hobbies, you know. Also, I've been thinking about what Madam Bones said."

"What's that?"

"About Remus teaching me Defence Against the Dark Arts," Maia said, dusting her hands, and Kreacher snapped his fingers, making the pitcher and empty plate disappear; he disappeared with a soft _crack_, and Maia followed Sirius out into the gallery. "Oh, your trunks are over there, by the way."

"Oh, brilliant!" Sirius grinned, clapping his hands together and rubbing them eagerly. "I'll have a look through those later! What were you saying, about Remus?"

"Well, it seems silly that I should wait until September to start studying magic, if I'm _chaperoned_," she said, glancing at Sirius with an ironic grin, "by you and Remus. I'm sure there are kids who study at home, aren't there?"

"Probably," Sirius conceded, shrugging. "It's a good idea. A very good idea, actually; some of the Hogwarts professors are in the Order."

"Are they?"

"Yep," Sirius said lightly, motioning to remain quiet as they made their way past the moth-eaten curtains down to the kitchen.

"Minerva McGonagall, the Transfiguration professor; Flitwick and Sprout, they're the Charms and Herbology instructors, respectively," Sirius said, once they reached the kitchen, where Madam Bones now sat with a glass of Maia's cider, talking to Remus in her deep, booming voice. "And Snape. Potions master." By the way Sirius said the man's name—and remembering the boy named 'Snivellus' Snape in some of his and Remus' stories about their time at Hogwarts—Maia knew Sirius didn't like the Potions master very much.

"Tea, Maia?" Remus asked, indicating the teapot he held, having refilled his own cup.

"I think I'll have some Pimms, actually; I'm a bit hot," Maia said, glancing into the pantry, and laughed at the expression on Kreacher's face when she set about preparing the pitcher of Pimms herself.

"It's okay, Kreacher," she laughed. "I love to cook. In fact—how about we make a deal? You clean, I'll cook? Sirius can do the washing-up."

"Oi!"

"Something's got to keep you honest," Remus said, glancing around from Madam Bones, who chuckled; they had been talking about her niece, Susan, who would be going into her O.W.L. year come September. Sirius exhaled disbelievingly, then sat pouting, until Maia produced a selection of sweets, cake and fresh fruit.

Maia remained in the kitchen long enough to decide that the next room she needed to work on was the dining-room, to give the Order somewhere else to meet so she and Kreacher weren't hindered in the kitchen every time they gathered for a meeting, and chatted with Madam Bones about her brother, Edgar, who had been part of the original Order of the Phoenix, but whose family, much as Maia suspected hers had been, had been killed by Death Eaters—the term Voldemort's followers used for themselves. Madam Bones had known Maia's mother, Balian, who had apparently been incredibly talented, _very_ kind, and very popular. Maia was ushered out of the room by Mrs Weasley before she could enquire further about her mother, and Madam Bones was gone before Sirius called her back downstairs for dinner.

Maia had slow-braised the lamb-shoulder she had picked up in Diagon Alley, serving it with freshly-minted new potatoes and a platter of fresh spring vegetables, including but not limited to broad-beans, buttery runner-beans, mounds of fat, freshly-shelled peas, carrots, with a delicious gravy made from the juices from the meat.

When Maia produced her _special_ four-tier Black Forest gateau, with a filling of sour cherries simmered in black-cherry jam and kirschwasser and fresh clotted-cream between each layer, the sponge sprinkled with her homemade cherry liqueur, topped with fresh cherries and chocolate, there was _silence_. Sirius went into raptures (and a slight sugar-coma) eating his slice.

There wasn't a _crumb_ or dollop of spilt jam or clotted-cream left when everyone patted their stomachs, tea and coffee being passed around with a small cheese platter. Ailith had warranted Maia's gateau incredible enough to deserve several frames of her photograph film.

Mrs Weasley worried that Remus was far too peaky; that Sirius still needed a bit of fattening up and some Rejuvenation Drafts and a lot more sunshine; that Maia's waist was too narrow, and that she should get some fresh air. When the Order members had left, Remus produced three Butterbeers; it tasted wonderful, sprawled on the front-step, soaking up the sunshine and some rare fresh-air. Maia made a note to put in some potted herbs and flowers on the doorstep, so they could have fresh herbs.

Maia could tell Sirius was agitated about people coming and going, having to listen to their reports on what they were up to while he had to remain inside the house except for rare excursions as Padfoot. After two years on the run, going wherever he pleased, being cooped up as if he was back in Azkaban was telling on Sirius. However, the prospect of perhaps visiting Maia's "Hobbit-hole" and the coast cheered him up.

"Are we going to watch _The Fellowship of the Ring_?" Sirius asked, dusting his hands off once his Butterbeer was gone. "You did promise yesterday, you know, and we never did." Maia chuckled sluggishly; her dinner, and the sun, and a long day out in Diagon Alley, had caught up with her, and she was wonderfully warm and sleepy. But she had promised, and since Remus was "on duty" tonight, Maia agreed.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: I had so much fun writing about the shops; J.K. didn't go into too much detail, but when I think of Diagon Alley, I imagine it a combination of the market from _Stardust_, spice souks and perfume markets in the Middle East, with Parisian-type specialty shops. Witches and wizards wear a combination of clothing that range in style from Marie Antoinette-esque flat hats and beaded high-heels to Victorian bonnets to embroidered Hobbit waistcoats. I like inspiration from _Marie Antoinette_, _POTC: On Stranger Tides_ (Elizabeth's Asian costume), _Kingdom of Heaven_ and the last Russian tsar and his family for dress/robes designs.

I've also been having a lot of fun thinking about werewolf rights and S.P.E.W. So there'll be a lot about that (and about Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes) and I've figured out an _ingenious_ (if I do say so myself) way for Sirius to help the Order, without actually getting into any trouble. _AND_ I've thought up some things that the kiddies can do at Hogwarts to help the Order, S.P.E.W., werewolves etc. and give the proverbial F-U to Umbridge.


	8. Chapter 08

**A.N.**: REVIEW. Don't just favourite or add to your alerts, tell me _why_ you're doing that! Tell me you like the story, and I should bother to keep writing it. Do you like Maia's personality? What would you like to see happen in this story?

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_08_

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><p>"Do you <em>ever<em> sit still?" Sirius asked, watching Maia, who chuckled.

After a blissfully hot shower in the scrupulously clean first-floor bathroom, Maia's skin was drying in the heat of the oven and the open kitchen-window, dressed in her cotton nightie and her exotic dressing-gown, kneading dough at the table. She had brought a diamond-weave basket down from her room, filled with some of her new books, _Gambol & Jape's_ products, her folder of hand-cut dress-patterns and a much-beloved, battered board-game. She had also brought down the little vial of starlight seed-beads, and as soon as the dough had been set to proof and the flour cleared from the table, she wanted to bring out the quilt to sew the beads to it.

"No," Maia smiled.

"I tell you what, you really did a number on Kreacher," Sirius remarked idly, glancing at the boiler-room door. Maia wasn't certain whether the house-elf was in his den, but Sirius didn't bother to keep his voice down. "He was even nice to _me_," he said softly, staring. Maia laughed. "Kreacher has never been fond of me."

"Well, he's been alone for ten years," Maia shrugged. "He's been a prisoner just as much as you have. I think he just needs little kindness, that's all," she said softly, and Sirius's face flickered with a wolfish grin.

Due to Sirius' request to watch _The Fellowship of the Ring_, Maia had brought out her brand-new, HD flat-screen television, which, at forty-two inches, was brilliant tucked neatly on the mantelpiece over the range: she set the DVD-player on a shelf on a dresser, and got down a large copper pot from the rack on the ceiling, the bag of popping corn from the pantry, and, adding a few teaspoons of very fine sugar to the pot, Maia held the lid to the pot, listening for when the popping noises ceased, and put a tablespoon of her special blend of spices into a few pints of her cider on the hob, mulling it.

"Are we going to play this game, then?" Sirius asked.

"In a minute," Maia said, folding the dough into the centre and tucking it under, shaping the dough into a ball, before setting it into the bowl to proof once again; she set it near the oven for extra heat. Washing her hands, she sat opposite Sirius, and proceeded to teach him how to play _Scrabble_, a game he had never heard of despite his love for Muggle culture; he claimed his forte was music and motorcycles.

While they watched the film, they played _Scrabble_, Maia's alternately busy with her quilt, finishing it off with the tiny seed-beads that glittered in the darkening kitchen: Sirius was exceptionally clever, and very funny. It wasn't long before they were laughing, bantering over Sirius's fixation with the number of times he could rephrase "rat", "traitor", "betray" and "kill"; they paused for a little while, so Sirius could devote his attention to the film, while Maia gushed over Strider and examined the Gambol & Jape's products, leafing carefully through some of her new books.

Something about the four men—well, two Men, one dwarf and an elf—got to Sirius: but even Maia's lip was trembling, tears splashing down her cheeks, by the end of the film. Boromir always got to her: "I mean, it's _Sean Bean_!" she sniffed. Turning the DVD-player off with a flick of the controller, Sirius went eagerly to one of Maia's DVD-cases, to search for _The Two Towers_ and _The Return of the King_, eager to continue watching the broken Fellowship's adventures, but Maia laughed, saying it would be two o'clock in the morning before they finished watching it. Instead, they turned back to their game, listening to the records that Tonks had given Maia, and the new ones she had bought in Diagon Alley, going through the Gambol & Jape's products Maia had picked up out of interest, listening to Sirius' stories of how he and the Marauders had employed the tricks at school, and looking through the 'Entertainment' section in the _Evening Prophet_ for the latest news in the musical scene, for dates of the next gigs for select bands.

When her sewing was finished, with an exultant exclamation and a laugh of delight as she held up the _finished_ quilt, Sirius sat examining the exquisite details, the lifelike, very beautiful princess on the intricately-embroidered seashore, bubbling with pearlescent foam, surrounded by ethereal sirens.

"I can well imagine you made this—all the de Lusignan girls were incredible with needlework," Sirius said, examining the tiny details. Maia smiled at the quilt. It had been between the Little Mermaid greeting her sisters at the water's edge, or she had debated turning another scene, that of the Little Mermaid touching land for the first time, amongst the mass-exodus of newly-hatched green-turtles to the foam… Talking to Sirius about the quilt, and the other choice, he voiced his desire to see the paintings she had done for her coursework project, and the ones she had continued painting the past eighteen months.

She put the fresh loaves into the oven, grinning over how much they had risen, and while they continued their game of _Scrabble_, Sirius read aloud to her from _Practical Defensive Magic and Its Uses Against the Dark Arts_ as she mixed dough for choux pastries, and another batch of short-crust pastry for a pie and several miniature petit-four tarts, inspired by the ones she had seen it the market earlier, and by the handwritten, beautifully illustrated recipes handed down from an ancestress,: the recipes went back to the days when Queen Marie-Antoinette had championed decadence and delicacies. She set the bowls of pastry-dough in the cool larder to sit overnight, after taking off a little section, which she rolled out, and made into six little jam tarts using Sirius' favourite jam.

As Maia added the pieces to spell "funeral" onto the board, she saw Sirius's pale eyes taking in the word, saw the cogs churning. He glanced up and caught her eye.

"Can I ask you a question?" Maia nodded. Sirius sighed, as she paused in writing down her score. "Why did you decide to come here? Dumbledore didn't give you very long to decide, and the entire world would have you believe I'm a mass-murderer. And we had never met; how were you to know what kind of person I am?" Maia shrugged awkwardly, fiddling with a bit of popcorn.

"I don't… I never thought she'd _actually_ die," she whispered hoarsely. Her throat and eyes felt uncomfortably hot and tight in her body. She clenched her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry, because if she started again, she wouldn't be able to stop, and she was so _very_ tired of crying. "I knew she was ill for such a long time, I just never thought… She's _gone_, and I'm… She's all I have ever known, in my whole life."

She'd had time to think about it, wandering Diagon Alley with Remus, shopping, systematically sewing curtains and cushion-covers earlier, chatting to Sirius. She _liked_ him, she liked her _uncle_, was thrilled that she had the opportunity now to get to know the man she hadn't even realised she could call family. Sirius seemed content with her answer, giving a small nod of understanding; they continued to play, until Maia changed the record to her favourite Elvis song, and Sirius grinned.

"What?"

"When I was your age, you know, James wanted to be an Auror or a great Quidditch player on the English International Team, and Moony wanted to be…well, Moony deserves a lot of things he doesn't have," Sirius said, his smile faltering for a moment. "_I _wanted to have my own radio-station, where I could play all my favourite records, whether they were Muggle or Wizard, and just talk about music, drink beer, smoke as much as I wanted, and exude so much sex-appeal to my lady-listeners that I'd have a different girl doing the walk-of-shame from my flat every morning." Maia laughed for the first real time in weeks.

She had found herself doing that a lot, listening to Sirius mutter mutinously about needing to buy her a whip, she kept his nose the grindstone so hard while they cleaned; and listening to Sirius and Remus banter; clutching her stomach at the dinner-table while Tonks continued to upset goblets, catch her sleeve on fire, argue indignantly with Sirius, and teasing Remus.

Sirius lamented that he had missed so much during his time in Azkaban—in the Muggle world as much as in his godson Harry's life: Maia teased, asking whether he had even seen _Titanic_—"I have; the boat _sinks_ at the end, very weird!"—and she had to promise to get the books she had referenced in essays for her American Popular Culture Since 1945 module at school, so he could "study up". She told him about the new television-shows she liked—they made dates to watch _Hairy Bikers' Bakeation_ and _Rachel Khoo's Little Paris Kitchen_, as well as _Sons of Anarchy_ "for the bikes"—and they laughed over their mutual love for _Blackadder_. Sirius remembered the original _Doctor Who_ from Lily Evan's dad watching reruns of it, and Maia produced the complete modern series on DVD; she loved it. They made plans to completely redo the library, which Sirius teased Maia had made a good start on in _Flourish and Blotts_ earlier, with the amount of books she had bought, except Sirius remarked that, "You know, I think we should wait until Hermione arrives. We should just…give her a picnic, and let her loose in the library. She'll get it sorted out in no time. Harry says she practically lives in the Hogwarts library."

Maia chuckled, and, going over the films she had heard were being released in the cinema, Sirius sighed, "I used to love going to the cinema on my days off from working for the Order." He shot Maia a sneaky glance before asking, "Would you be able to sneak a 'guide'-dog into the cinema down the street, if you pretend to be partially-blind?"

It was lovely to sit and talk, drinking cider sociably and playing _Scrabble_, filling the kitchen with the scents of jam-tarts and fresh bread while they listened to the _Fellowship of the Ring_ soundtrack, which Sirius loved, and asked whether Maia could find sheet-music for "in the Muggle world". Maia, who had been brought up a concert-level violinist and pianist—"which I heard yesterday, by the way; I don't think that piano's _ever_ been played! Absolutely beautiful"—promised to show Sirius her really quite staggering collection of sheet-music, and books, and records, but "when we have the time! I'm going to start on the dining-room tomorrow."

"Before or after we head to Diagon Alley for paint?" Sirius asked, glancing up from the _Scrabble_ board.

"Um…after. We can head to Diagon Alley early, then go to the Hobbit-hole… You can help me pick the new vegetables and fruit, and I can check on my girls, and the bees. Hopefully there should be some new honey… We can go for a walk down to the beach if you want, then come back and work on the house," Maia said, and Sirius nodded.

When they both made their way up to bed, Sirius gathered up the three still miniaturised trunks from the table in the first-floor gallery, grinning from ear to ear with delight at something, and Maia yawned and ducked as she passed the grandfather-clock, and, sitting at her own leather-topped writing-desk, which she had brought out from her trunk, she took the time, having been busy the last few days, to write in her diary.

It wasn't a normal teenager's diary, with tidbits and heart-surrounded initials of her crushes penned in every few months; every day Maia would write something. Sometimes it was an essay on whatever she was studying independently from school; sometimes it was a poem, or a short-story; sometimes she would choose a sonnet or fairytale and illustrate it with exquisitely-coloured drawings; other days, she would glue a favourite photograph onto one of the pages, with a detailed description of what the significance of it was. Sometimes she would put together a mood-board with bits of fabric, beadwork and trim for costumes she had made for the Amateur Dramatics Society in the village; she kept a list of all the books she read, and it was in here that she documented the knitting-patterns and clothes patterns she had created, and illustrated the intricate patterns for her quilts. Before her death, her aunt had written fifty-two prompts for Maia to write, one a week for the next year, but Maia had done enough in the last few days to fill half the pages of her diary without need for a prompt! She sketched studies of Sirius, Remus, Tonks and Ailith, and refined her method of drawing scars with a few sketches of Mad-Eye Moody. She drew and coloured a picture of Kreacher, in the loincloth and then in the tea-towel; and a picture of the outside of number twelve, Grimmauld Place; a drawing of what Professor Dumbledore had looked like on her doorstep; and detailed studies of the other members of the Order she had met.

Certain she could hear Procol Harum upstairs, she sighed as she rinsed the paint from her brush, minutely detailing the watercolour of the sweet-shop she was working on. She was painting glimpses of each of the shops Remus had taken her to in Diagon Alley; she had drawn each of the Wizard coins; had written descriptions of some of the things being sold at the market; and her encounter with Mr Ollivander; and the _dragon_, wondering what Mr Diggory, as head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, would have to say about the goblins' treatment of the dragons.

After compiling a list of notes to remember—_Buy paint_; _Write to H. Granger about Elf Rights_; _Ask Mr_ _Diggory about dragons and elves_; _Ask Kreacher about homeless/banished/_old_ house-elves_; _Ask Remus about teaching me_; _Find out about 'homeschooling' during the summer_—she pulled out the book on cosmetics she had bought in _Flourish and Blotts_. Bringing out her diary again, her mind was a flurry of activity, envisioning lacquered transistor-style magically-powered pocket-wirelesses, and she leafed through the book on cosmetics, learning the recipes for things like painless sugar-wax, plumping lipstick using diluted Bubotuba pus, serums that dissolved unwanted hairs, how to bake eyeshadow, and she got to wondering…where did teenagers and young-adults go to buy makeup? Madam Primpernelle's had been _old_.

It was lovely and hot in her room, even with the window open and the sky a deep midnight purple; setting her journal aside to dry, with watercolours of a pocket wireless, an eyebrow-grooming wand (one end with a spiral grooming brush, the other with a painless, scented hair-dissolving serum), a cheek-tint and an illuminator crème; she wanted to make the first out of necessity, hating having to pluck her eyebrows, and was curious about making her own tints and illuminators. She turned off the lamp, climbed into bed, and promptly fell fast asleep.

* * *

><p>Remus was in the kitchen when Maia came downstairs the next morning: he had evidently been out all night, as he sat dozing in his seat, wearing the same clothing he had worn at dinner. Burdened with <em>Magical Theory<em>, by Adalbert Waffling, as well as the _Standard Book of Spells, Grade One_ and _The Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration_, Maia set the books down on the table, poured two cups of tea and gently roused Remus, who started, glancing around the kitchen.

"What time is it?" he murmured.

"Almost eight," Maia said. "What time did you get in?"

"Few hours ago," Remus said, his eyes sliding closed again.

"Why don't you head up to bed," Maia suggested gently.

"I've got work…"

"It'll still be here in the afternoon," Maia said, with a stern bite she had learned from being class prefect. Remus nodded, heaving himself out of the rocking-chair. "Have a good sleep." Remus gently touched her shoulder as he passed, and pulled himself, already half-asleep again, up the stairs.

Preparing the pastry crust for a pie, Maia set some aside with the choux pastry to work with later: she was working at the sewing-table on the first-floor gallery when Sirius dropped downstairs, yawning and ready for his breakfast—a wedge of chocolate-cake and a bacon and egg sandwich—and she had reviewed her journal for notes. She had also taken delivery of the post, and the _Daily Prophet_, and had sat wondering at the pentagonal, star-inlaid, incredibly complex-looking Wizard form of Sudoku, the pentagon and star within made up of tiny triangles, squares and stars, some of which featured numbers, some Runes, and a set of cues also written in Runes. She had looked through the crossword clues, making notes to ask Sirius about later, and though her mind was buzzing to start solving the Arithmancy-runes star, she didn't want to pen in the answers if Sirius or Remus wanted a stab at it.

After breakfast, Maia made sure Kreacher knew to let the Order know they were out, but Remus was upstairs sleeping, and she and Sirius departed, Kreacher locking the door behind them. Sirius in dog form, they made their way to Diagon Alley; Maia, now bearing her new _wand_ in her little bag with her coin-purse and her lipstick, tapped the brick above the dustbin in the courtyard behind the Leaky Cauldron, and she made her way to the emporium where she had picked out the carpets and wallpapers, and came out of the shop bearing tins of plain white emulsion for inside, and a little pot of deep, rich crimson that Sirius picked out for the front-door.

She stopped for a brief moment to look at the record-shop, wondering again at the immense size of the antique-looking Wizarding wireless, and wondering why wizards hadn't already modernised: she muttered this to Sirius, who gave a sort of shrug, and she wondered why the proprietor had been so excited to sell her a baker's-dozen records yesterday. As they left Diagon Alley, she wondered why it felt like she had settled gently into a new sort of routine.

The walk to and from Grimmauld Place did them good, and before it had reached nine o'clock it was already blisteringly-hot: Maia found her beekeeping hat, the smoker, and the set of a dozen sterilised jars she had recycled to put any fresh new honey in. She loved the jars, curvy and elegant, and had always found that jars of her fresh honey or homemade jams, tied with a little circle of gingham and a bit of raffia, made excellent gifts.

Everything about her little meadow home was…the same. But strangely cool, despite the blistering sunshine: "It's nothing without the woman who made it," she said sadly, when Sirius asked why she didn't look happier to be home.

Sirius had transformed back into a man as soon as they were safe within the protection Professor Dumbledore had set up; being a self-professed "city-boy", had never seen how honey was harvested, nor had anything to do with chickens, but he fell in love with the sweetest of her Bantams, pale-golden Pookie with her fluffy white legs, and while Maia harvested the honey from her hives, Sirius watered the numerous vegetable-patches. Leaving the honey to filter, Maia taught Sirius how to harvest the cherries in the orchard—"Do cherries grow underground here?"

"It's the _only_ way to get them down," Maia smiled, using a rake to shake the limbs of the cherry-tree, and the sky rained with glossy garnet cherries. They picked apples, pears, plums and apricots, and Sirius munched his way through the pea-pods as Maia cut fresh runner-beans.

Professor Dumbledore hadn't packed Maia's bicycle when he had put everything into that trunk the afternoon he had come to see her; it lived beside the hencoop, which was reached by a set of steps carved almost like an optical illusion into the side of the hill, to the left of the front-door and windows, and the comfy wicker chaise Maia usually brought out in summertime for Diane to sit on while she shelled fresh peas and cut up fruit for making jam. Up the steps, they were on top of the hidden cottage, with a better view over the meadows, and it was here that a washing-line was pegged between two chestnut trees (the roots of which had been polished and incorporated into the ceiling and panelling of the Hobbit-hole) and the girls were clucking away happily in their hencoop; a vibrant surprise waited, Maia's old-fashioned bicycle with high, wide handlebars, a basket and pale-blue wheel-rims, was painted a punchy sunflower-yellow. Tucking her wicker-basket into the basket on the front of her bicycle, she tucked her skirt carefully and climbed on; Sirius transformed into his dog-form, so he could pelt alongside her as she had some exercise, cycling through the meadows, over the gentle hills, around the woods, using the little ancient footbridge to cross the stream where it was narrowest.

The land her family held was so vast, it reached to the very coast, and Maia had always been fond of the private beach, rich golden sands dotted with seashells, the rocks covered with an abundance of shellfish, a gentle lagoon sheltered from all but the most violent coastal storms. The ride to the beach didn't seem long to Maia, who had made longer trips to and from the bus-stop to school every day, and she could tell Sirius enjoyed it, bounding around and barking happily alongside her as she cycled, and it made her laugh to see him gambolling around. Especially when they reached the beach, with its stunning cliffs, gentle dunes and the great natural archways carved from rock, through which the waves lapped and gurgled, rushing to their feet; Maia picked enough muscles for a good lunch, and they made their way back to the Hobbit-hole.

Maia checked on her honey, filtering it a second time, this time finer, and while they waited, they basked in the sun, enjoying handfuls of cherries, ripe peaches and some raw peas. Deciding she wanted to set half the honey, Sirius Apparated her back to Grimmauld Place so she could jar half the honey, heating the rest so it set.

Sirius disappeared upstairs while Maia retreated to the kitchen, and she spent a little time setting half the honey, labelling the honey-jars and binding circles of cheerful yellow gingham over the lids with raffia: she brought out the choux pastry, making tiny little choux balls to decorate later; finger-length miniature éclairs; sugar-dotted _chouquettes_, cheese-sprinkled _gougères_; and rolled out the other, leftover pastry for tiny round and boat-shaped tartlets to decorate with redcurrants, baby-strawberries, gooseberries and pink raspberries, segments of peach and cherry. She made tiny cupcakes; and used some of her leftover honey, not enough to fill a whole jar, to flavour macarons and homemade marshmallow. She left the pastries to cool, washing her hands vigorously to remove any grease, and went up to the first-floor gallery; music filtered downstairs from the upper-storeys, and she sat systematically sewing the blinds and curtains for the dining-room, before Kreacher helped her lay out the new rug, and she turned to reupholstering the sixteen dining-room chairs.

She could still hear music coming from upstairs when she had finished upholstering the last cushioned seat, screwing it into place, and with a plate of the freshly-decorated petit-fours, she went to find Sirius.

She heard _The Who_: she had found him. She followed the staircases—and the music—up, to where the gallery and corridor was no longer pristine and glowing but still grubby, dim, though she had made the effort of opening up all of the windows—which were _still_ open—and stripping the bedding; all of the bedrooms were bare of linens until she and Kreacher could get around to stripping and cleaning the rooms. She found two doors, bearing the same silver plaque as her own bedroom-door bore, and _Sirius_ was scrawled on it: the door stood ajar, and it was from here the music was issuing.

She poked her head inside. She had found Sirius's Secret Sanctum, as it were. The place to which he retreated; his childhood bedroom. And it was the epitome of everything that was anti-Black; silvery wallpaper was no longer visible behind wall-sized collages of posters of every kind and subject-matter, Muggle and Wizarding alike, record-sleeves, stickers, glossy golden-era bombshell posters, photographs, red and gold ribbons and a great banner splashed with a roaring lion, pinned above the carved headboard of a very handsome bed, on which Sirius lay, his eyes closed, ankles crossed and long legs draped with a heavy quilt of gold-sewn scarlet, his head resting against a hand-embroidered black cushion sewn with the costume-makeup designs of the original members of KISS.

The bedroom was spacious but cluttered; at least six double-bookcases stood at odds on the dusty carpet, with a custom-built island-console topped with shallow sections filled with records, and featuring three-foot-tall black built-in stereo-speakers; there was a magical-version of a jukebox, glowing in the corner: the bookcases, the jukebox and the island-console were the only pieces of furniture _not_ covered in a fine film of dust. It looked to Maia, suddenly, the way her doll's house used to look when she had been halfway through rearranging the furniture, having dumped pieces from different rooms in one particular space, where they obviously didn't belong. The bookcases, the console, the three huge trunks open on the dusty carpet, were groaning with records, some of them with books, but Maia saw enough records to know Sirius could start his own radio-station and never have to play the same song twice for weeks.

While the bookcases were stuffed with records, there were a _lot _of books also: some dark and sombre-looking; some with vibrantly-coloured, embossed spines; some with flimsy, creased covers featuring glossy pictures: the console was heaped with memorabilia, rolled-up posters tumbling from a shelf; stacks of photographs without frames piled a foot high next to a collection of dusty, half-full bottles of alcohol and shot-glasses with comical phrases; a collection of two-dozen neat leather journals each stamped with the letter "S" in the lower-right-hand corner were neatly stored, each with the last two numbers of the year embossed in gold at the bottom of the spine; there was an impressive collection of vintage Muggle cameras, and a faux dragon-hide box full of odd little objects—a yoyo; a slinky; a voodoo doll that looked suspiciously like Mrs Black's portrait downstairs, stuck full of scarlet and gold pins; an embossed golden ball the size of a walnut, a _Snitch_; a miniature Christmas-tree; a stack of Chocolate Frog cards; a pair of vintage sunglasses; a video-cassette; a cricket-ball; a collection of glass bongs, badges, patches, and above all, _stacks_ of string-bound letters and cards. There was a writing-box and a phoenix-inlaid lacquered box, each barely closed over letters and dusty envelopes, and one of the trunks was open and flashing dully with what looked like film canisters. There were a lot of old clothes; more photographs; more memorabilia and books, and a collection of glass spinning-tops. A huge, handmade message-board, similar to her own but framed with an elaborate crimson frame, leaned against the foot of the bed, and was stuffed with photographs; ticket-stubs; random pictures and doodles, red-and-gold ribbons, letters, drawings, pins, magazine cuttings, newspaper articles, photo-booth strips, and shopping-lists.

"So this is the Bat-Cave," Maia smiled. Sirius perked his head up, a pair of tatty-stickered blue headphones draped around his neck, and grinned.

"Hi!" he replied.

"What are you up to?" Maia asked, sidling into the room between bookcases, dodging around the large console, wary of the bookcases _groaning_ with records and books. If Sirius had ever heard that _new_ bookcases could be purchased when the old ones were stuffed three-deep with books and records, he had ignored it.

"I'm just reminiscing," Sirius smiled lazily, as Maia climbed onto the corner of the bed, careful not to displace anything, and catching a sliding pile of photographs, before setting down the plate of treats, producing the two bottles of Butterbeer from her pockets. She glanced at a spread of pieces of parchment, each stuck together rather haphazardly, featuring about five different people's handwriting, heavily doodled-on, with arrows pointing the direction of reading, and the words "_Flat Rules_" were doodled elaborately at the top of the central piece of aged, stained parchment.

"From when you and Remus lived together before?" Maia asked, glancing at Sirius, whose smile was…devastated. She glanced at the Flat Rules again, chuckling over the first rules, and the comments annotated about them…then the rules started changing, and the tone of the notes left behind became…cautious, scared, upset, lonely… The last note read, "_Going to check on Wormtail, Moony. Back soon. I'll give Prongs and Lil your love_", with the date, _31 Oct_. The day Harry Potter's parents, James and Lily, two of Sirius's oldest and _best_ friends, had been murdered by Lord Voldemort.

"I thought you were supposed to reminisce about good things," she said softly, glancing at Sirius, who gave her a smile; this one was different, brighter.

"You never dwell on your aunt," Sirius noted thoughtfully. Maia sighed, popping a little pink-iced choux ball in her mouth, rubbing her shoulder.

"There's no point," she said sadly, curling up against one of the crimson pillows embroidered with gold phoenix tail-feathers. "She's gone. I can't do anything about that. But she's not in pain anymore, so even if I could, I wouldn't."

"Was she ill for a very long time?" Sirius asked gently.

"For all of my life," Maia said, glancing at her _uncle_. "She was always eccentric, and sometimes…sometimes I wondered if she was just being naughty, or whether she was showing early signs of dementia… It was staggering that she was so ancient, yet was only just starting to fail… She was ancient even before I was born. When she'd taught me all she knew, I took care of her. And when she…" Her eyes burned, and her throat closed up, but she inhaled slowly, and continued, "When she _died_…I was there with her…she wasn't even scared, or upset."

Sirius's hand was suddenly on her shoulder, giving her a gentle squeeze, and Maia's eyes closed at the singularly _comforting_ he gave her. He rubbed his thumb against her shoulder.

"She knew she'd done her duty and raised a _very_ good girl," he said softly. Maia exhaled bitterly, her shoulders slumping.

"Do you know, I wanted to get school out of the way…so I could spend more time with her," Maia said, with a bitter laugh. "Devote myself to looking after her."

"Come here," Sirius said gently, sighing, and he curled her up against his side, gently cuddling her. He stroked her long, long hair, playing with one of the curls, and sighed. "The best-laid plans, poppet…" Maia's mind suddenly went to the Boggart-Dementor, to the voice it had forced her to hear, her _father's_ voice; he had called her 'poppet', too, and 'baby star'. _Best-laid plans_, Sirius had said. Maia sighed. She had been there, when her aunt had needed her, but now _Maia_ needed her aunt. Diane had been _proud_ that Maia was so bright, and so hard-working, something she had learned from her aunt.

"You know it wasn't your fault, don't you?" she said quietly, glancing up at Sirius.

"What's that?"

"Pettigrew. And James and Lily." Sirius sighed heavily. Maia bit her lip thoughtfully, glancing up at him again. "And Pettigrew was a coward, but he didn't have to betray them—_you_. It was Voldemort. All Voldemort." Sirius squeezed her a little tighter. Maia sighed and rested her head against his shoulder, gazing at the masses of records Sirius owned, but she didn't really see them; she was focused on what Sirius had said about the night the Potters had been assassinated. "Was it James and Lily he wanted, or was it Harry?"

"What do you mean?" Sirius asked, and she detected the wariness in his tone.

"Well…you said Voldemort killed James, and Lily was killed defending Harry," Maia said, frowning thoughtfully. "But when Lily was dead, why did he bother turning to Harry? He was only a baby."

"Maybe he just liked killing," Sirius said quietly. Maia frowned.

"From what you've said of Voldemort, I find it difficult to believe he ever did anything without a reason," she said, glancing up at Sirius. She frowned. "Maybe there was something else going on." She sighed, knowing she probably wasn't going to get any answers, not until she turned seventeen and could be inducted into the Order, at least. She sighed, frowning again. "Sirius?"

"Mm?"

"When…when did my mother die?" she asked quietly. Sirius sighed heavily.

"Balian?" he said, and he seemed to stifle a shiver that she felt, cuddled up to him. "About two months before James and Lily." Two months before…

"In August?"

"Yes."

"Before or after the nineteenth?" Maia asked hoarsely, her eyes burning. Sirius was quiet for a moment.

"After," he finally said, roughly. "After your second birthday." Maia's birthday _was_ on the nineteenth of August, which had made her perpetually the youngest child in her class at school.

"And…when did my father die?" she asked quietly. Sirius sighed.

"Fifteen years ago," he said. "Thereabouts, I think. The tapestry marked it down as then…"

"I would have been a year old," she said softly to herself. She frowned. "How can a Dementor make you go back that far into your memories? _Memories_ don't even start to form before you're about four." She'd thought her earliest memory was of meeting Jasmine at the door of her reception class, on her first day of school when she was four.

"Dementors suck away every happy memory, every hopeful thought, until you are left with nothing but your very _worst_ memories," Sirius said heavily. Maia glanced at him.

"I'm sorry you had to endure Azkaban for so long, Sirius," she said, with feeling. Sirius glanced at her, pale eyes sad. "But I'm glad you escaped." Sirius sighed, looking glumly around the room.

"Traded one prison for another," he said, and for the first time, he sounded _bitter_. Maia sighed and glanced around the room too.

"But this prison has a TV, records and an excellent chef," Maia said, buffing her nails on her shoulder, and Sirius chuckled.

"It does indeed."

"And you get to hang out with Remus," Maia pointed out.

"And my _niece_," Sirius said, looking faintly surprised all over again to realise he actually _had_ a niece, that his brother, whom he had run away from at sixteen, had fathered a child. "It's so _odd_ that Regulus had a kid."

"Why odd?" Sirius shrugged, seemingly unable to put into words what he felt about having a niece.

"He was just…_young_," he said, blinking quickly, frowning.

"You said Lily and James were twenty when Harry was born," Maia pointed out. "Wasn't having families young the done thing during the war?"

"Oh, it was," Sirius nodded. "But Regulus hadn't even left school before you were born… Balian had you just months after she left school…"

"Did you know her?"

"Everyone knew Balian," Sirius said, giving her a very sad smile. "She was absolutely fantastic. She was a year below us at school. The _height_ of cool, very fun, very beautiful. Very smart, exceptionally talented …I would guess you get that from her."

"Was she in the Order?" Maia asked.

"She was," Sirius nodded, and something shuttered his eyes, dark and upset. "She threw herself into everything. She had the least to lose…"

"After what happened in that parlour?" Maia asked; her thoughts lingered on what she had heard, and her Uncle Bertie's face, before sleep set in, but she had been so young, and whoever she had been with at the time had made sure she hadn't seen anything but Bertie's face. But she could guess that something…truly gruesome had happened. And she was the last left. Sirius glanced quickly at her, then sighed and looked away.

"Yes," he said quietly. Maia didn't ask about it; she was afraid to know what had happened in that parlour, when the handsome blue-eyed man had tucked her alone into safety. She was afraid to confirm that her nightmares were actually the truth. Whenever it had happened, her mother had still been alive to find Maia in that blanket-box; so it had been before she was two years old, before her mother had died. By the way the Order had reacted to hearing she was Balian's daughter, and the look in Sirius's eyes when she had asked when her mother had died, she…she was sure her mother had died in some horrific way. Why else would Diane not have told her about it?

She decided to change the subject: "Are all these records yours?"

"Yup," Sirius smiled, seemingly glad of the change of subject.

"That's a huge collection for someone who's been incarcerated in some way or another for fourteen years," Maia said, and Sirius grinned. "How did you pay for all of them?"

"Er, well… If the Muggle police ever actually caught up with me, charges on about seven years' worth of theft would actually stick," Sirius said, clearing his throat and trying not to smirk.

"You stole all of these?" Maia said, raising her eyebrows, laughing. "Well, with magic, I suppose it's effortless."

"I paid for some of them," Sirius shrugged. She glanced around the room, taking in the posters.

"Charming décor," she said, nodding her head in indication of the posters on the walls. "Rita Hayworth?"

"And Betty Brosmer," Sirius grinned idly. "And Marilyn, Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner."

"And Elizabeth Taylor," Maia smiled, glancing into one of the trunks, in which film-canisters really did shine and glint in the sunshine searing through the open windows. There was a _very_ vast collection of film-reels. "Okay, where did you get these? Muggles don't sell film-reels to anyone but, well, cinemas."

"You remember that wizard cinema I mentioned the other night?" Sirius asked, and Maia nodded slowly. "When I was…fifteen, it was my first and _only_ job, tearing ticket-stubs and selling popcorn during the summer. During the War, the wizard who owned it was killed. He didn't have anybody else, and I had spent nearly every day during my summers there, before I escaped this place to go to James's, so he left me all of the films. He had a huge collection; he was a lot older than me. Think he wanted them to go to someone who would appreciate them."

"Do you have a projector?" Maia asked curiously.

"Somewhere in there," Sirius smiled. "It's a shame nobody gets to enjoy them anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, as I said, it was the _only_ wizard cinema in Britain. I've had these in my vault for nearly fifteen years," Sirius said, eyeing the film-reels. "I used to think about buying the old theatre, to show films, and host gigs. There was an office that would've made a very good recording-studio after a bit of renovation, and a broadcasting studio for a radio-station. After the War, of course." Maia crept off the bed, careful not to dislodge anything, and squatted down beside the trunk, peering inside. Whatever spell Remus had used on her wicker-basket, Sirius had used on his trunk, as there were many different compartments within the trunk, each of which seemed to be almost bottomless. She went through the reel canisters, reading familiar film titles, ranging from the earliest Charlie Chaplin reels to cult flicks of the 1980s, a ton of films from the 1990s and nearly every _Disney_ animated film and James Bond film ever made in between.

There were _hundreds_ of reels, all neatly labelled. Some of the most famous and well-loved films in Muggle history were preserved here, untouched for nearly fifteen years, including some of her favourites: _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers_; _To Catch a Thief_; _Casablanca_; _La Dolce Vita_; the original _Alice in Wonderland_; _The_ _Wizard of Oz_; _King Kong_; _Bonnie and Clyde_; _Breakfast at Tiffany's_; _Doctor Zhivago_; _The Great Escape_; _My Fair Lady_; _Psycho_; _Rosemary's Baby_; _True Grit_; _West Side Story_; _Alien_; _Animal House_; _Grease_; _Jaws_; _Monty Python_; _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_; _Saturday Night Fever_; _Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory_; _The Shining_; _Back to the Future_; _The Breakfast Club_; _Ferris Bueller's Day Off_; _Fast Times at Ridgemont High_; _The Blues Brothers_; _E.T._; _Indiana Jones_; _Dirty Dancing_ and _The Blue Lagoon_.

"Is the projector charmed to work off magic, rather than electricity, then?" Maia asked.

"Yep. He showed me how to do it, too, before he was killed," Sirius said, flashing a wolfish grin.

"Is that how you enchanted your Harley?"

"Well, I had to tweak some things for the bike… God, I miss it," Sirius exclaimed.

"Biking?" Sirius grunted, as Maia went through more of the reels. "Does Mr Hagrid still have your bike?"

"I haven't had the opportunity to ask," Sirius sighed heavily.

"Perhaps you should."

"Maybe."

"Not _maybe_. You only live once," Maia said, glancing up. She frowned. "Probably. I had a dream last night that I was on the first-class deck of the _Titanic_. Although, it was midday, and Strider and Legolas were there doing the waltz, and Boromir was in a kilt playing the lyre… Very weird. You should ask Mr Hagrid about the bike, if only so you can repossess it. And just gaze at it."

"Yeah. And make sure he took care of it," Sirius said, shuddering at the thought of his bike being left to collapse into a pile of rust.

"You know," Maia said thoughtfully, "you really should do something with all of these films and records. You said wizards don't have films at all?"

"None," Sirius said.

"So what do kids do?" Maia asked curiously. "With their free-time, I mean?"

"Follow Quidditch, play chess and gobstones," Sirius sighed. "Read. Do homework."

"It's a wonder I was the only child born to teenaged parents," Maia said dryly, and Sirius barked a laugh.

"Indeed," he chuckled softly.

"I was wondering why that man in the record-shop got so excited yesterday when I bought all those records," Maia said thoughtfully.

"It's because the Wizarding wireless doesn't play rock music," Sirius grumbled.

"None at all?"

"They'll play a _Weird Sisters_ record, I think, but it's mostly chamber-music and Celestina Warbeck," Sirius grimaced. "Very little advertising for the amazing records coming out."

"Sounds like Muggle radio in the 1960s," Maia said, glancing at Sirius, because inspiration had just hit her; pirate-radio stations. "So all of these fantastic records, like the ones Tonks gave me, they're never on the radio?"

"Nope. According to Tonks, Ailith really got the underground Wizard music-scene going," Sirius said, and there was something so…_fond_ in his voice, and the way he said Ailith's name, that made Maia glance at him covertly. "She was the Entertainment correspondent for a few years. It's because of her the _Weird Sisters_ are so popular; she wrote about them, and about a lot of other bands too."

"I'd like to listen to this Wizarding wireless," Maia said, frowning thoughtfully. "And I _really_ want to know why wizards still use those god-awful, enormous radios. That one in the record-shop was _huge_."

"I know," Sirius sighed. "I think I have a transistor-radio in one of my trunks somewhere. James gave it to me for Christmas when we were fifteen, it was one of those build-your-own kits. I had to modify it to work off magic, and pick up the wireless…"

Maia rolled her eyes, saying, "God, why are wizards so _backward_!"

"Backward?" Sirius barked a laugh.

"Come on, house-elf en_slave_ment; brutality toward that dragon in Gringott's—that's disgusting—and all that crap about blood-purity," Maia scowled. "And the _judicial_ system! If wizards can use Veritaserum to force the truth out of someone, why is it that people like those Death Eaters you told me about are allowed to walk free while _you_, who never killed anybody, were chucked in Azkaban for twelve years?" She snorted. "All those laws that protect purebloods, I'm actually surprised they did, even if you are a half-cracked mass-murderer."

"Well, just because Veritaserum is used doesn't mean people will listen," Sirius sighed. "People will believe what they want to believe, and ignore the rest."

"You mean like the Minister for Magic and Barty Crouch Junior," Maia said, glancing at her uncle. She frowned at him thoughtfully, then turned back to the film-reels. "Is there no way to reverse the Kiss?"

"None whatsoever," Sirius sighed heavily.

"Not even if you were to kill the Dementor who did it?" Maia asked. "Wouldn't the souls return to their bodies?"

"You watch too much television," Sirius chuckled softly. Maia shrugged. "I don't believe there's a way to truly _kill_ a Dementor. You can cut off its food supply, and it will weaken and wither away and die, but the only spell that can…_repel_ a Dementor, to protect wizards, is a Patronus Charm."

"What's that?"

"It acts…like a sort of force-field," Sirius said. "The Patronus is unique to the wizard who conjures it; it's a projection of the very things Dementors feed on—happiness, hope, warmth. A true, corporeal Patronus will drive away a Dementor."

"Can you teach me?" Maia asked, kneeling up and gazing at Sirius. Sirius gazed back. She needed to know how to repel a Dementor, "Surely not everyone…collapses when they come across a Dementor?"

"No, not everyone," Sirius said quietly. "But not everyone has experienced the same…terrible things as you. Harry fainted, the first time he came across a Dementor. Remus taught him how to produce a Patronus Charm."

"Can Remus teach me?" Maia asked.

"I can, if you want," Sirius offered, adding with a slightly humorous smirk, "since I'm _grounded_. But the Patronus is beyond N.E.W.T.-level magic. A lot of adult wizards have trouble with it. I think it would be better if you started at the beginning."

"I looked through _Magical Theory_ and the _Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_ this morning," Maia said, glancing at Sirius. "And the _Standard Book of Spells, Grade One_."

"They're the ones Tonks gave you, aren't they?" he asked, and Maia nodded.

"I thought I could…try teaching myself, to begin with," she said. "But I'm curious how other homeschooled children are taught. Do you have to go through Hogwarts?"

"I'm not sure," Sirius frowned thoughtfully. "But I know McGonagall at least would be far more comfortable teaching you herself, rather than letting you get on with it; Transfiguration is some of the most dangerous and complex magic there is. In fact, she used to threaten me and James with expulsion when we messed around in the back of her class. Even though we'd already Transfigured our guinea-fowl and howler-monkeys."

"We don't have any of those," Maia frowned, thoughtfully. Sirius chuckled.

"No. You could practice on Kreacher, if you like." Maia gave him a look that made Sirius laugh. "Why don't you get your books; we can make a start on some of them—I might even have my old notes and essays in here somewhere."

"How did you manage to save all of this, anyway?" Maia asked, glancing around. "It was all in your vault, but—"

"I visited Gringott's just before I went after Pettigrew," Sirius said, sighing, and his eyes grew wide as he said, "Changed my will and everything. Just in case." He exhaled with a puff. "I'll have to redo that now. Why don't you get started on painting, while I go through these and have a look for my old lecture-notes? It'll be better for you to study with proper annotated notes than just going through the book."

"Okay," Maia nodded.

"And, here, actually, why don't we go and get your books, and I'll have a look through them," Sirius said. "It's been a while since I cracked open the _Standard Book of Spells_ or the _Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration_."

"If you tutor me in Transfiguration, maybe I could attempt Animagi down the line," Maia said softly, and she grinned; that sounded like an absolutely _fantastic_ idea. To be able to turn into an animal any time she wanted? _Cool_.

"Go on, go and get your books," Sirius chuckled. He made a thoughtful noise. "Maybe we can turn a room on the second-storey into a schoolroom? Or a study."

"I thought about moving your dad's old desk downstairs," Maia said. "For Remus to work at, you know? I didn't go through the drawers, just in case."

"Yeah, I saw you'd stripped the room—and cleaned all those photographs."

"There weren't very many of you," Maia said cautiously.

"That would've been my dear old mum," Sirius said. "Purging the house of any trace of me once I'd run away."

"This room doesn't exactly scream _I-have-no-firstborn_," Maia said, glancing around.

"Permanent Sticking Charms," Sirius grinned roguishly. Maia committed the name of the spell to memory. "My mother probably tried with all her might to get this stuff off the walls."

"How are _we_ going to get it off?" Maia asked, touching one Elizabeth Taylor poster on the wall. "And without destroying it all."

"I'm sure we can find a way," Sirius smiled.

"What are you going to do with all of this stuff, anyway?" Maia asked.

"I don't know," Sirius said lightly, glancing around.

"Once you're acknowledged as innocent, you should really reconsider that cinema idea," Maia said. "I think that would be really cool."

"Yeah," Sirius grinned, sighing wistfully, as if he loved the idea of freedom too much to really think about it, or hope for it.

"Um, have you seen Remus at all today?" Maia asked. "I sent him up to bed earlier, but I'd thought he'd be awake by now."

"Oh, let's leave him," Sirius said, sighing. "Rest will do him some good."

"But so will _food_," Maia said, as they made their way downstairs.

"Good point," Sirius remarked. "Are you going to get those books?"

"Yeah, hold on a sec," Maia said, and Sirius meandered after her to the third-storey gallery, ducking out of range of the grandfather-clock. Sirius squatted down to examine her own enormous memo-board, grinning at some of the photographs, making curious noises at some of the ticket-stubs, invitations, letters and artwork, fabric swatches, magazine cut-outs, concert and festival playlists; cards and postcards; notes and doodles.

"When are we going to unpack _your_ trunks?" Sirius asked.

"Um…I don't know," Maia said thoughtfully. "When the rooms have been repapered? Oh, by the way, I've finished reupholstering the dining-chairs, so when the Order comes for the meeting tonight, you can have it in the dining-room, if you can help me paper the walls and paint the window-frames."

"Yeah, we can do that after we look through your books, if you want," Sirius said. He was carrying the plate of petit-fours Maia had brought up to him, expression that of utmost delight as he sampled her _pâtisserie_ skills. "That'll be that room finished, yes?"

"Yep. Kreacher polished all the silver, and I've done the blinds and curtains, so they can go up," Maia said. "And while you're having the meeting, I might get started on the sheet-music in the old music-room."

"Alright—hey, wearing your dragon-hide gloves, alright?" Sirius made her promise. "Anything could've crawled in there. My mother was fond of nasty surprises."

"I'll have Kreacher help me," Maia said, and Sirius nodded. "And I think I might write a letter to Hermione Granger."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes. I'd like to ask her more about her society for elf-welfare," Maia said. "I think she'd be interested about Kreacher… Not all house-elves are completely neglected like he was, are they?"

"I'm sure they're not," Sirius said. "Not all. It depends on the family they're bound to. Usually, when a house-elf's master dies, the elf is passed to the heir, with all the wizards' other possessions. It's unfortunate that the only remaining member of Kreacher's family was in Azkaban when his mistress died."

"Possessions," Maia frowned.

"That's the way wizards see house-elves," Sirius shrugged. "I think there's some law that says if a wizard kills another wizard's house-elf, they're liable for stolen property."

"Not murder? That's disgusting," Maia scowled. "And nobody…nobody knew what state Kreacher was living in, until you came here? In an abandoned house, alone?" Maia said, frowning. Sirius grunted, around a mouthful of chocolate éclair.

"Oh, this is gorgeous! Oh, I think you shall have to show me how to make some more of these," Sirius said, licking his lips. "No. Kreacher is bound to the Black family; he could have gone to live with my cousin Andromeda—more likely he might have been tempted to go to Narcissa, as she wasn't wiped off the tapestry—as they're the last two besides me and Bellatrix, who's in Azkaban. But I was legal heir to this place once my mother died, so Kreacher was bound to remain here, as the house was still in the possession of a Black."

"Someone should have _checked_," Maia frowned. She shivered, imagining how it would have been if Diane had been left to live alone, if Maia had been killed with the rest of her family in the _tragedy_; to _die_ alone, with no one to notice. "Isn't there some sort of…I don't know, census?"

"I'm not sure; you'd have to ask Amos Diggory," Sirius said. "He'd know. If you're going to write to Hermione, mention Amos. She's got a few bones to pick with him about house-elves."

"Oh, yes?" Maia asked curiously, and as they made their way down to the kitchen, Sirius told her about the house-elf named Winky, who had been set free—the punishment of highest shame to a house-elf—because Barty Crouch Jr. had shirked his Imperius Curse and sent the Dark Mark into the sky during the Quidditch World Cup. "You'll have to ask Hermione what happened in the forest; I wasn't there. But I don't think Mr Diggory made a friend out of Hermione with the way he treated Winky."

"Hm," Maia grunted darkly, and she sat down at the kitchen-table with her books, and her wand.

"Oh, and if you're going to write to Hermione, um, well, just check with me first before you put something in writing," Sirius said, glancing at her.

"You mean don't mention Number Twelve, or the Order. Or you," Maia said, and Sirius flashed her a grin.

"Exactly. If you have to wonder whether you should put it in a letter, the best option is to not write it," Sirius said.

"Is owl-post the only method of communication?" Maia asked curiously. "I mean, Muggles have phones that text, and email—you can even video-conference with someone on the other side of the world over the internet."

"Owl-post is the most commonplace form of communication," Sirius said. "There is a method the Order utilised—Patronuses. They can take the voice of the wizard who conjures them, and they can't be mimicked because each Patronus is unique. So you can pass messages, almost instantaneously, and know the person who's saying it is actually the person who cast it."

"What if someone put the Imperius Curse on you and forced you to do it?" Maia asked. Sirius blinked.

"I'd never thought of that." He frowned. "The Patronus Charm requires presence of mind, and I'm not sure… That requires some thought."

"I'm sure Professor Dumbledore thought of it, or he wouldn't have had the Order use that method," Maia said, and Sirius nodded. "Are there any other methods of communication? No wizarding equivalent of telephones?"

"No," Sirius chuckled. "The only other thing we did during my time in the first Order was to use Dumbledore's pet phoenix, Fawkes."

"Professor Dumbledore has a pet _phoenix_?" Maia gasped softly. Sirius nodded.

"Fawkes was always in Dumbledore's office when I was at school," Sirius grinned. "Beautiful bird. Anyway, he can send warnings, at Dumbledore's bidding."

"House-elf magic is different to wizards' magic, isn't it?" Maia said slowly, and Sirius nodded, frowning thoughtfully. "You said that the house-elf, Dobby, who tried to stop Harry going to Hogwarts could Apparate in and out of Hogwarts, but you also said that wizards can't do that very same thing… Why don't you employ Kreacher for things with the Order? Things that might not be possible for wizards, with the limitations they have on magic, but could be possible for house-elves?"

"Another very good point," Sirius said, staring at Maia. "Alright, hand over those books; I'll take a crack at these, and it might be easiest if I Summon my old lecture-notes rather than digging through those trunks. Get started on the painting?"

It was fiddly work, the repainting of the window-frames. Maia produced a few fat rolls of masking-tape from her art-supplies box, and set about taping up the glass and walls so no paint could get onto the glass or panelling, and Kreacher helped her remove the sliding panels from the window-frames so she could paint them, as well as the frames: Kreacher produced _The Homemaker's Helper_ from Maia's room, which had a section on decorating charms, and she used one to dry the paint, and when Sirius appeared, having found seven years' worth of his old lecture-notes, he showed Maia how to use magic to paint the walls: the high-ceilinged room featured rich walnut panelling, polished to a blinding glow, and left a good four foot of wall that Maia painted light-green, with a stencilled frieze beneath the polished cornice; the ceiling was also beautifully panelled. She and Kreacher hung the blinds and the curtains: glowing orbs of light were conjured in the wall-sconces, the candelabra and the chandelier; the silverware and crockery neatly arranged in the sideboard, with the freshly-washed decanters and cut-crystal glasses from the library arranged on top with a vase of flowers from the kitchen set on the table. The dining-room was finished.

"It seemed like such a gruelling job," Sirius said thoughtfully, standing in the doorway, arms folded over his chest as he leaned against the doorframe, gazing into the room. It looked utterly unrecognisable from the grim, buzzing dining-room Maia had entered only a few days ago: the panelling shone, the pale-green paint above the wood giving the room a contrasting lightness, with soft, faintly-iridescent olive upholstery on the chairs, the floor left bare to show off the beautiful parquet. "But actually…this place is shining up better than I could ever have imagined." He shot Maia a look, as if he was startled by how good she was at cleaning and redecorating. Maia smiled back, and they left the room, returning to the kitchen.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review. What do you think to the Wizard cinema? I thought that'd be right up Sirius' street when he was a kid. Anything to give his parents the proverbial F-U.


	9. Chapter 09

**A.N.**: For those of you not versed on English colloquialisms, 'going on the pull' means, basically, going out and looking to get with a boy/girl. Usually there is alcohol involved. And very few times are you as successful as you'd hoped. For example; Harry 'pulled' Ginny after that memorable Quidditch match.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_09_

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><p>In the first few days that followed the completion of the dining-room, Maia settled into a wonderful new sort of routine. In the mornings, she would get up, do some reading while she had her breakfast, do some sewing, then Sirius would Apparate with her to the Hobbit-hole so she could tend the chickens, and they usually met Remus in Diagon Alley. Maia being underage, and therefore not permitted to apply for her Apparition test, wasn't allowed to Apparate by herself, but sometimes, Sirius encouraged her to do just that, especially if he and Remus were tied up in the house with visiting Order members and she needed something from Diagon Alley—more thread; filling for cushions; neat folders for sheet-music she and Kreacher had sorted through in the old music-room; a book on house-elf magic; a set of potions ingredients from the apothecary—because, as Sirius said, he, being an unregistered Animagus, and a fugitive wanted for mass-murder, didn't exactly have a paw to stand on when it came to upholding the law.<p>

When she returned from Diagon Alley—or the Hobbit-hole, if she wanted to pick fresh vegetables for lunch—she and Sirius would sit down in the study. Maia had moved her grandfather's leather-topped desk to a first-storey room opposite the door that led to the library's mezzanine gallery, and they had also brought in a large, low round table set beneath one of the two huge windows, several low bookcases, and while they continued to blitz through the other rooms, Sirius let Maia salvage anything she liked the look of, though they found that most of the prettiest items in the house had been relegated to storage-rooms or tucked under beds—they found an unusual chandelier tucked into the cabinet of a writing-desk in a fourth-floor bedroom, and hung it over the desk in the new study, which had been painted a dusty forget-me-not blue, with some comfortable armchairs reupholstered and brought in. The walls were covered with low bookcases, some of which Maia used to house her growing book-collection, and arranged some of the rare porcelain, lovely figurines, exquisite vases and diamond-trimmed oval miniatures of everyone in the family since the 1740s; she found marble busts of handsome relatives, portraits of beautiful young women in various different styles of dressrobes and jewellery, and a life-size marble statue of an infant Sirius.

She wanted to put this in pride of place on the dining-room mantelpiece, so everyone who came to a meeting could admire it.

Sirius' reply was too colourful to print.

The study became the centre of activity for Maia's magical education.

With Astronomy, Ancient Runes and Arithmancy under her belt, proficient at gardening and with a little knowledge of Israeli wizards' gardens, able to recount the details of any specific event in wizarding history thanks to Diane's lessons, and a theoretical understanding of most subjects—she had, after all, voraciously consumed her mother's old, out-of-date textbooks—Sirius wanted to put her book-knowledge toward a practical exploration of Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms and Potions.

It was on the polished round table in the new study that Maia procured her two-burner camping-stove, charmed by one of Diane's American friends in Salem to work off magic, rather than gas, and which Maia had long used in the Hobbit-hole; the first things Maia made were Ink-Erase Paste and a bottle of Colour-Change Ink, and from there, Maia worked through her Potions textbook. As she learned Herbology out of books, she let her ingenuity over cooking recipes take over, allowing her to tweak and modify a handful of Potions recipes for better effects.

The round table became dedicated to the twin-burner stove, a handsome apothecary-box that had belonged to Sirius during his Hogwarts days, a thin black rectangle of cool slate that was actually a weighing-scale, and overflowing with books, and whatever Sirius was instructing her in at the time; turning matches into needles, or levitating things. Remus gave her lessons on Dark Creatures—Boggarts were the first thing he taught her, how to repel them:

"Alright, the charm to repel Boggarts is pretty standard," Remus said. "But what really finishes a Boggart is _laughter_. You've got to be able to _laugh_ at what terrifies you."

Maia's mind instantly went to a sort of Jessica Rabbit-esque set of lips pouting lustily under the Dementor's hood, and she stared at Remus; he laughed at her expression.

"The charm is _Riddikulus_," Remus continued. "When you encounter a Boggart again, it will assume the form of a Dementor. You have to use _Riddikulus_ to force the Dementor to turn into something comical—and _laugh_. That will destroy it."

While Maia practiced destroying a Boggart, and started working through _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_ with Remus, Sirius said he would teach her the Patronus Charm; Remus and Kreacher were going to scour the house, and keep any other Boggart they found, so Maia could practice the Patronus Charm, if only on an imposter-Dementor.

"Is a real Dementor worse than a Boggart?" Maia asked.

"Very much worse," Sirius sighed, glancing at Maia. She thought he stifled a shiver, but it passed before she was certain of it. Sirius frowned thoughtfully at Maia.

"A Dementor is something else entirely. They're among the foulest creatures in the Wizarding world—even Muggles feel their effects, even if they can't see them. They feed on every good feeling, every happy memory, until you're left as nothing more than what they are—soulless and evil. The most effective way to stave off a Dementor is by using a Patronus Charm—a complicated charm well beyond N.E.W.T. Most adult wizards have trouble with it."

"Why's that?" Maia asked curiously. Sirius looked thoughtful for a moment.

"To conjure a Patronus, you must think of a memory, a very _happy_ memory," he said, "and use it to conjure up a shield of everything the Dementor feeds upon—hope, happiness, the desire to survive. Patronus Charms require…well, I think the best way to say it is that wizards who are confident in themselves, in their abilities, confident that they can produce a Patronus, can. It requires presence of mind."

"You said each Patronus is unique to the wizard who conjures it. What do they usually look like?" Maia asked.

"They vary, but they're usually a reflection of your personality," Sirius said. "Mine takes the same form as my Animagus form." Maia raised her eyebrows thoughtfully; she wondered what her Patronus form would tell her about herself. "A true Patronus will charge down a Dementor, make it flee, and protect you from the Dementors' influence. The incantation is _Expecto Patronum_. But it won't do a bit of good unless you're concentrating, hard, on a single happy memory. Why don't you try it now? Come on. _Expecto Patronum_, concentrating hard on a happy memory."

"Have you ever read _Peter Pan_, by any chance?" Maia asked. Sirius cracked a grin.

"Concentrate," he said, and Maia tried. She thought, and thought… Happy thoughts…happy thoughts…?

When she had gone to London with her college friends to see _The Lord of the Rings: The Musical_ and _A_ _Midsummer Night's Dream_; that had been an incredible weekend, playing Ring of Fire and Deprivation in their tiny little hostel with a few bottles of _Southern Comfort_ and Coke, eating pizza and Thai curries; going to visit the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London, visiting The Clink, and Madam Tussaud's; taking a ride on the London Eye, visiting Liberty London and Harrod's; going dancing after _The Lord of the Rings: The Musical _and giggling as they filled eight rolls of photograph film, crying with laughter during the Royal Shakespeare Company's _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The car journey had almost been the best part, sharing sweets and getting hyper on cans of Coke and singing along as loud as they could to their favourite songs while they blazed down the motorway in blistering sunshine, the windows rolled down, thrilled that exams were over.

Maia grinned to herself, allowing the memory to take over, "_Expecto Patronum_!"

An enormous silvery mass shot from the end of her wand, powerful-looking and sturdy. Sirius jumped, and gawped; Maia took in the great, silvery creature, glowing brilliantly even with the dying sunshine splashing across the study floor. It was there for a moment; so startled by achieving the full effects of the spell in her first try, Maia let her concentration slip and the creature faded before she could get a good look at what it actually was.

"Well, that must have been some memory," Sirius smiled. "To produce a corporeal Patronus on your first try."

"It faded so quickly," Maia said.

"You just have to keep focusing," Sirius said. "Keep focused on that memory, and the Patronus will do the rest."

"It'll be more difficult with a Dementor, won't it?" Maia said, and Sirius nodded.

"More difficult, but no different. You just have to keep focusing on the memory you've chosen," he said. _Happy thoughts_, Maia thought, recalling her friend's favourite childhood film, _Hook_. "If we find another Boggart in the house, which I'm sure we will, you can have a shot at tackling the Patronus Charm in the face of a Dementor." Until then, Maia knew, she would have to suffice with practicing summoning the Patronus, focusing on happy thoughts. "Come on, try again, because actually, you can use Patronuses to send messages."

"Oh, I remember you mentioning that," Maia said, nodding.

"I'll teach you how to do it, once you've got the Charm nailed," Sirius said. "Come on; happy memories. Try it again."

So Maia practiced. Within a half-hour, she could produce the Patronus every time she tried. Powerful, graceful, a great hippopotamus shone pure silver every time, enormous, its presence unbelievably soothing.

Sirius found a chapter on animal symbolism in a dream-interpretation book from his personal library of schoolbooks. He said he had taken up Divination, got bored after two weeks, and dropped the class, but never bothered to dump the book, and deciphered the meaning behind Maia's hippopotamus Patronus, a reflection of her own personality: powerful, creative, imaginative and healing, with the ability to navigate deep emotions gracefully and without losing perspective; protective and showing mother-fury when needed, the hippo encouraged the birth of new ideas and proper use of aggression. Maia dwelled on that for a little while. Her nurturing instincts; taking care of her great-aunt—and gracefully navigating strong emotions? Handling her aunt's death, moving here.

* * *

><p>Sometimes while she was having her lesson—a few hours every day, usually with a break for afternoon-tea—Kreacher and Remus would be cleaning, or repapering and painting the walls, painting window-frames, treating marble fireplaces, polishing furniture and washing and restoring trinkets. Kreacher did a lot of cleaning, and they increasingly found that he was more and more cheerful, even to Sirius (who didn't say anything at all, if he couldn't find something nice to say), the more they asked him to help, and especially since Maia had sorted him out some new pillowcases, a selection of his favourite sweets, some new blankets, and had given him a few of the photographs of the Black sisters, because he had started to cry when he had thought she was going to toss them out like she and Sirius had the grubby old portraits: she invited Kreacher to eat with them at every meal, though sometimes he declined if he was in the middle of a job.<p>

In the evenings, while Kreacher whistled to himself upstairs, scrubbing out bathrooms and linen-closets, or sitting by the warm oven polishing silver or the beautifully inlaid, gilt little tables she and Sirius recovered from some of the upstairs bedrooms. Kreacher had decided to go through the contents of the attic-rooms, bringing down beautiful pieces of furniture Sirius had never seen, as well as beautiful portraits and landscapes he started restoring, and a lot of antiques that were neither Dark nor snakelike. They would all sit in the kitchen, listening to Sirius' and Maia's records—both Wizard and Muggle—and comment, after an hour-long section called _Witching Hour_ on the Wizarding wireless, on the complete lack of any interesting programmes on the radio. They still hadn't gone through all the sweets Maia and Remus had picked up in Diagon Alley, and in the evenings, when the Order members had dispersed and dinner was finished, they sat sampling sweets, and eating fresh popcorn and mulled cider, sometimes watching a film on Maia's television, or projected from Sirius' collection of film-reels; if they watched films, Maia would paint her fairytale watercolours, or sew; she was working on turning the fabric she had bought at Gladrag's into summer-dresses. Sometimes, they played _Scrabble_, chess or backgammon—Maia had to teach Sirius and Remus about "Queen's money" when they played Monopoly the first time, and they laughed over Clue, reminded of their Map.

Remus liked to set Maia homework for Defence Against the Dark Arts—it meant Maia got stuck into the subject, and many mornings found her curled up in a corner of _Flourish and Blott_s, reading and taking notes for her essays, or visiting the Magical Menagerie or the Herbology emporium for the shopkeepers' expert knowledge on specific plants and creatures. So if she wasn't sewing her dresses—always fully-lined, the bodices boned, with bust-darts and flirty hemlines, piping details and little buttons, embroidery to personalise the fabric and beadwork to make things just that much more special—or working on pinning and lining curtains and blinds for whatever room they were working on, Maia was sometimes writing essays while they listened to music, or had a film playing, or, as was the case one evening, Sirius making his way through season five of the modern _Doctor_ _Who_.

Sometimes Maia would bring her potions books downstairs, with her diary and paints, and she would sit and go through the recipes for cosmetics, and for other potions, and she would commit with paints her daydreamed cosmetics. At sixth-form she had, for the first time without uniform, been able to indulge in her love of fashion, and while she had been young to start sixth-form—barely into puberty while the rest of her AS-Level classmates were sixteen and seventeen—she had developed a love of lipstick, had come round to adoring her natural curls, and with several older friends, had become adept at applying liquid eyeliner with a "kitty flick"—a subtler take on the cat-eye—and experimenting with bronzer, different glosses and illuminators and especially _Benefit Cosmetics'_ powders. Eyeing her paintings one evening, Sirius encouraged her to pursue her desire to create cosmetics for herself—the eyebrow-grooming serum, a red lipstick that didn't fade or smear, but came off clean in one wipe of a particular makeup-remover without leaving residue on the lips or skin, and nail-polish that smelled beautiful.

A subtle suggestion from Mrs Weasley one evening that Maia buy some Patented Rejuvenation Draft for Sirius, to help him recover from the Dementors' influence, and her own curiosity about magical cosmetics, had Maia spending an hour one morning in Madame Primpernelle's. She came to the conclusion, after asking Ailith and Tonks where they bought their makeup—the first summer they had met, Muggle-born Ailith had taken Tonks to _Boot's_ to look at the numerous cosmetic companies that tendered their products—that witches her age, teenaged and "young-professionals", were extremely limited with their choices for makeup. Madame Primpernelle's was it, and inside the shop it had smelled of lavender and patchouli, with a hint of hemp, and all of the products had been "old biddy"-style. However, she came out of the shop with an owl-order catalogue to examine, and pamphlets on a selection of classes available to learn how to make cosmetics.

Sirius had made a half-hearted attempt to start going through the library, however, it was such a daunting job that he decided he had better do it in short, violent bursts rather than risk prolonged exposure to the mould. And besides, he preferred the library Maia was amassing in the study, both from the books she had purchased at _Flourish and Blotts_, and the books she had acquired in foreign countries, her own novels and stories and old Muggle textbooks. Again, Sirius suggested that they just let Hermione Granger loose on the library and see what she came up with.

Because it seemed fact that Hermione Granger, as well as Mr and Mrs Weasley's other children, Cedric Diggory and at some point Harry Potter himself were going to be coming to stay at Number Twelve. While Maia had finished school early due to her exams being over and done with, Hogwarts still had a few weeks of term-time left, and every time Harry was mentioned in conversation—which was quite a lot—Sirius would grin with anticipation, and the more he wanted the house to be a great place for Harry to live in during the interim between the Dursleys and school, the less he grumbled about redecorating, though he was still inclined to tease Maia whenever she knocked on his door bright and early, ready to roll out new carpets, paint window-frames and hang curtains.

Whenever the Order gathered for a meeting—which was every day, the meetings longer if a new member was being brought in, and especially if reports were being given—some of the members would inevitably remain for dinner (Maia's cooking skills were somewhat deified by Tonks, who couldn't cook and who had taken up Maia's offer to teach her easy recipes) and it was Mrs Weasley who began teaching Maia _cooking_ spells, teaching her how to increase the amounts of food she produced—for example, the day she had cooked trout_ en papilotte_ with fennel and new-potatoes, forgetting that it might not just be the four of them. Mrs Weasley taught her how to make a single batch of choux pastry feed a generous selection of petit-fours to _thirty_—the petit-fours icing and decorating themselves.

In Number Twelve, Maia was learning spells as she needed them, not strictly adhering to the _Standard Books_' organisation of charms. She learned decorating charms, and cooking ones, cleaning charms and the _Aguamenti_ charm was helpful in watering her vegetable-garden, especially with the warned-of drought threatening to parch Britain.

Every morning, the _Daily Prophet_ arrived, paid for with a Knut from the red flower-pot on the windowsill, and Remus had to duplicate the crossword so both Sirius and Maia could have a stab at it—the crossword cues taught her about magic and British wizarding culture as much as textbooks did. She had also taught herself how to play the incredibly complex and stimulating pentagonal Runes and Arithmancy game, which kept her love of numbers and her knowledge of Ancient Runes alive. Every morning after breakfast, she would Apparate to the Hobbit-hole, feed the chickens, collect their eggs and watered the vegetables before it got too hot—then to Diagon Alley. She spent a _lot_ of time there, visiting every morning, especially if the market was on.

If they were finished with magazines or hadn't touched books in years, a lot of people in the Order, hearing of Maia's home-education, had started dropping them off for Maia to read through, and so she was learning more about British wizarding culture. After her afternoon lessons with either Remus or Sirius, Sirius would Apparate her to the Hobbit-hole, to have a bicycle ride around the meadows—sometimes this helped clear her head of potion fumes—and they would pick fresh vegetables for a late dinner, as it was getting too hot to eat while the sun was high in the sky.

The _Evening Prophet_ was usually brought over by a tired Ailith at the end of the night; like Tonks, she stayed for dinner almost every night, and had stayed overnight once; when Maia had gone up to bed, blissfully happy with the first sundress completed from her new fabrics, she could still hear Sirius and Ailith talking.

With the copious amounts of food supplied by Maia—they ate little meals, and often, the way malnourished babies and animals were cared for—and doses of Rejuvenation Draft hidden in his drinks, Sirius was becoming more handsome by the day, though this was also perhaps due to his happiness. He didn't stop talking, and Maia found in him a very engaging, articulate companion, who just happened to be her uncle. They were becoming _friends_. And it had been a long time since Sirius had had any.

They talked about a lot of things; music, literature, Wizarding culture, and as Maia started slowly to unpack things from her trunks, she in turn told Sirius about here rather inconsistent life, raised by a squib, attending Muggle school, but frequently taken on long 'sabbaticals' to visit her aunt's magical friends in far-off, exotic countries with hidden magical communities where time had stood still, given a lesson in Alchemy before she knew how to Transfigure a beetle, beating anybody who challenged her at chess. She had always had a camera or paintbrush in hand when on these 'sabbaticals' and Sirius spent one blisteringly hot afternoon going through folders of negatives and Maia's watercolours, making duplicates that Maia mounted and framed, decorating the rooms they had stripped of almost every other amenity.

Though the Order formed large, rambunctious informal parties before each meeting, for the most part there were only a few loyal regulars who remained for dinner, or to help redecorate an elegant boudoir, or brought over old books and back-issue magazines. Tonks, out of a love for Maia's cooking and wanting to get to know her second-cousin Sirius, was a semi-permanent fixture at Number Twelve, always teasing Remus; Ailith usually popped in for a cup of tea and something sweet, or stayed for dinner after meetings, sometimes bringing with her a dessert from a pâtisserie in Diagon Alley. Bill Weasley was living at his parents' house, while searching for his own place, and he and his dad usually stopped by in the evenings. With Mrs Weasley intending to bring her children to Number Twelve for the summer, she had come over two afternoons to help Kreacher with the redecorating while Maia had her lesson with Sirius.

But it was with Mr Weasley that Maia formed quite a lovely bond. He was infatuated with anything Muggle-related, and chatted Maia's ear off. He was hard-working and a good, earnest man, who had a sense of humour and despite long working-days, would sit entranced as Maia talked about aeroplanes, bicycles and the Underground, and chatted about the early postal-service in Great Britain (thanks to her Early Modern Britain module during A-Level Early History!)

One evening, Bill was reduced to tears while Maia tried to teach his father how to ride a bicycle. With a camera out, Mrs Weasley with a hand on her hip, pinching the bridge of her nose for patience, Mr Weasley's first bicycle-ride was fully-documented.

Maia managed to talk to Mr Diggory about a house-elf census before one meeting; no such thing existed, and it was due to discovering this, and receiving from Mr Diggory a slim volume on elf-rights and Wizarding property laws (which extended to the ownership of house-elves) that Maia thought more and more about Hermione Granger's society.

* * *

><p>"What are you doing?" Sirius yawned, glancing at Maia: He sat with his ankles crossed on the table, chair tilted back on the back legs, holding a hand of cards; he and Bill Weasley were playing a Wizarding card-game that resembled poker, only much more complicated, and a little heap of Sickles shone silver on the table.<p>

In Diagon Alley this morning, Maia had bought herself a dip-pen, a set of fine-quality stationery, a stick of deepest cherry-crimson wax, and a seal (a hippo): she had been trying her hand with the dip-pen earlier, found it irritating not to have ink readily available in the pen, but she was a quick learner.

"I'm…about to start my letter to Hermione Granger," she said, sighing as she licked her lips thoughtfully, eyeing the blank piece of neat stationery before her. "I don't really know how to start. I don't usually write letters to people I've never met."

"Tell her, Snuffles says hello," Sirius said, glancing up at her as he set a hand of cards down face-up, and Bill grimaced. "That should break the ice."

"By confusing her?" Maia asked; Sirius chuckled.

"It's the nickname I have Hermione and the boys use when they're talking about me in public," Sirius chuckled. "Write that I say hello, she'll know what you're on about." Maia nodded, frowned at the paper, and started writing:

_1 June, 2012_

_Dear Hermione,_

_I recently moved in with Snuffles—who says hello! He said you'd know what that meant, because I couldn't think how to begin this letter; I don't usually write to people I've never met before, but some things have come to my attention that I'd hoped to discuss with you._

_First, I realise I should probably explain, as Snuffles' name, in his circumstances, isn't something that can just be thrown about casually. I'm Snuffles' recently-discovered niece. I had no idea he existed, nor did Snuffles know about me—being his niece, at least; I think he knew my mother. The long and the short of it is that I am a witch, but attended Muggle school because of my elderly great-aunt, who is what is called a 'Squib' in the Wizarding world, and who needed me to take care of her; she left me in the guardianship of Professor Dumbledore until I am seventeen, who suggested I live with my uncle until I begin Hogwarts in September, to start my magical education._

_Until I moved in with my uncle I didn't know anything about Wizard culture, however, some of the things I have discovered in the last week and a half make me quite sick, and I hear you are the person to take these sorts of issues up with: a dragon is kept chained and brutalised by goblins in Gringott's; and the house-elf 'belonging' to my uncle's family, Kreacher, was left abandoned in the family-home ten years ago when my grandmother died, and no one noticed, or even knew to check._

_I've been talking with Mr Diggory, the head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, mostly about house-elves (though dragons, werewolves, centaurs and goblins also interest me; have you been following the proposed legislation intended to restrict the centaurs' territory? The article in this evening's _Prophet_ made my skin crawl), and Mr Diggory supplied me with the legislature on so-called 'elf-rights' and also on Wizarding property laws (I hope you will be as disgusted as I am upon discovering that house-elves are classed as 'property'). I found a book in _Flourish and Blotts_ on house-elf history, which I think might be interesting to study, though Snuffles says you practically live in the Hogwarts library and therefore have probably read it already._

_While Snuffles was telling me stories about your adventures with Ron and Harry, he mentioned a house-elf named Dobby, and another called Winky, whom he says I should particularly ask you about—Mr Diggory seemed to get a bit shirty with me when I asked him what happened in the forest at the Quidditch World Cup; however, he says punishment of the elf, for whatever 'crime' the elf has committed, is up to the 'owner', i.e. Mr Crouch Sr., negating the murder of a wizard, which is punishable by the Wizengamot._

_I understand that both Dobby and Winky now work in the Hogwarts kitchens, but that it was very difficult for them to find work after they were set free. However, I am more concerned with house-elves who are forgotten, such as Kreacher. _

_Remus Lupin mentioned that you began a society to promote house-elves' welfare. I am very interested in joining this society, in whatever position I can, and hope you can send me any literature you have written about it._

_I also hope we can exchange letters, at least until we can meet to talk properly, about some ideas I've been having about how I, that is to say, we, your society, can help house-elves._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Maia Black_

_P.S.: Snuffles says he'll see you all soon._

_P.P.S.: Bill says to say hello to Ron from him._

_P.P.P.S.: Remus says he hopes you're all getting through your end-of-year exams okay, and please mention to Neville Longbottom that he's more than capable of doing whatever he puts his mind to._

_P.P.—this is ridiculous; I'll just list everything they want me to say: Snuffles suggests you send a reply back with Ron's little owl, as I'll have to use the Post Office in Diagon Alley to send this to you; he also says to give Crookshanks a treat and a scratch from him!; Bill says to tell Ron he wants a rematch; Mr Weasley says to tell Harry that he's learned how to ride a bicycle. Mrs Weasley hopes Harry and Cedric are doing okay, and wants to make sure Ron is putting his whole effort into studying for his exams_.

"Anyone else want to add anything?" Maia asked drily.

"No, I think that's it," Sirius said, lounging in his seat and grinning as he reached to take the stack of silver Sickles he and Bill had bet. "I'll let you try and win 'em back if you want, Bill."

"How do you keep winning?" Bill scowled, bemused.

"It's _his_ deck," Remus remarked, and Sirius threw a _chouquette_ at him; Remus caught it in his mouth, chuckling, and he looked decidedly _young_ as he grinned and chewed.

"These are really nice, Maia," Bill remarked, popping a chouquette into his mouth. "What do you call them?"

"_Chouquette_," Maia said, and Bill glanced at her.

"French?"

"_Oi_."

"Do you speak French, or do you just know the name?" Bill asked.

"I speak it fluently," Maia said, glancing up from her letter; Remus had given her a little jar of some fine powder to dust over her letter, which dried the ink so it didn't smudge, and she sprinkled it over the stationery. "I lived in Paris for two months when I was thirteen, and Diane had taught me languages from childhood. She raised me to be multilingual."

"Multi?" Sirius said, glancing over his shoulder at her. "How many other languages can you speak?"

"Besides English and French?" Maia said, and Sirius nodded. "Italian, German, Arabic, Hebrew, and a little Japanese and Spanish. Diane also taught me Latin and Ancient Runes. I got an A-star in GCSE Latin."

"An A-star?" Mrs Weasley frowned. "Acceptable?"

"Uh, no," Maia said, glancing up, shivering. She was not going to get _mediocre_ grades! "A-star is the highest mark you can get on GCSE and A-Level examinations. They're trying to phase it out, actually…"

"The grading system for Muggles is different to Hogwarts, then," Bill said, glancing up as he shuffled the deck of cards.

"Well, I suppose, I don't know," Maia shrugged. "At school, you can get an A-star, an A, B, C, D or F."

"At Hogwarts, you're graded with the Pass grades, and the Fail grades," Remus said, glancing up from his work as she handed him back the little jar. "Pass grades consist of Outstanding, Exceeds Expectations and Acceptable. The Fail grades are Poor, Dreadful, and Troll." Maia laughed, then saw the look on Remus's face.

"Really? 'Troll' is really an exam result?" she blurted, staring. He chuckled. "I never know when to believe you or not."

"Probably best," Sirius glanced up, and Maia laughed.

"Did you recently take examinations, then?" Mrs Weasley asked, and Maia had to explain to her about A-Levels—the Muggle equivalent, Remus said, of Wizarding N.E.W.T. tests—and how she had recently sat the examinations, expecting her results to arrive back at her sixth-form college, in early-August.

"I can't imagine why your aunt didn't send you to Hogwarts," Mrs Weasley said, gazing shrewdly at Maia. "You seem to be the sort to make an exceptional witch."

"She still can," Sirius remarked, not looking up from his cards. "We're starting Maia out on the basics, aren't we?"

"Well, I already know Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Astronomy and History of Magic," Maia said, glancing at Mrs Weasley. "Diane taught me, as they don't require active magic. But Sirius is helping me go through Transfiguration, Charms and Potions textbooks. I'm trying to catch up as much as I can before September." Mrs Weasley frowned at Sirius.

"Are you sure that's wise?" she asked, giving Sirius a shrewd look.

"I can sit in the study with Maia and teach her what I know, or she can act like Harry and study under the sheets," Sirius shrugged. "At least this way she's chaperoned." Remus choked on a chouquette, and Sirius gave him a very deadpan look as he thumped Remus on the back. "I meant Maia's _supervised_. Anyway, it's not for long; we're going to ask the professors about some private tutoring. Remus here's the Defence expert, of course."

"Me? You're the one who taught Maia the Patronus Charm."

"I have a particular affinity for any charm that repels Dementors," Sirius said heavily. Mr Weasley shivered, and Bill glanced from Sirius to his dad.

"I hate Dementors," he said, setting his cards down pointedly. Maia turned to the neat recycled-card envelope, addressing it, as Sirius said, to _Miss Hermione Granger, Gryffindor House Table, Great Hall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_. It was strange not to need a stamp, but she liked melting the wax onto the back of the envelope, using her new seal.

When the letter was addressed, and set aside, Maia pulled her journal out—Sirius had read through a few pages of it, examining the paintings—and ticked off the _Write to H. Granger about Elf Rights_ note on one page, and turned to the fresh page she had been working on during lunchtime: more notes had been added; _Why do wizards have enormous radios?_; _How safe is owl-post? No magical equivalent of phones/IM_; _Why is there no Wizard cinema?_

She wrote down the note she had been contemplating all day, following several evenings of Mr Weasley grilling her ceaselessly on Muggle culture. She wrote, _Could there be a magazine dedicated to Muggle culture, for wizards to read and keep in touch so they can fit in when necessary_?

Setting aside her journal, Maia pulled out instead her new watercolours. Sirius encouraged her to 'wind down' in the evenings, after kneading dough and baking fresh bread, preparing fresh sponge-cakes and _pâtisserie_ for the next day, to just sit and relax, not rush around redecorating rooms. So, every evening, when they were all gathered in the kitchen, Maia would bring down a book, or her violin and sit practicing while the others listened; Mrs Weasley had gone into raptures over the _Little Mermaid_ quilt Maia had stitched completely by hand, "even if it doesn't move". Or, like tonight, Maia would bring out her painting.

She had only one painting left for the illustrations she had planned for her rewrite of _Sleeping Beauty_; had finished the last of the ones for _Bluebeard_, _Diamonds and Toads_ and _The White Snake_; and now pulled the ones for _Puss in Boots_ and _The Twelve Dancing Princesses _toward her, deciding which to work on. She had styled _Puss_ _in_ _Boots_ with Elizabethan costume, _The Twelve Dancing Princesses_ inspired by the decadent atmosphere and setting and beautiful costumes of Sibylla in _Kingdom of Heaven_, though each princess had a different shade of hair from the palest white-blonde to the very darkest ebony, and eyes from the darkest black to the palest lilac, with different complexions, cinnamon, golden, freckled, rosy-cheeked, very fair; but she wanted to work on a _Snow White_ painting, of her in the workshop of the dwarves—the dwarves inspired by Gimli, the workshop inspired by the jewellery shop in Diagon Alley and her grandmother's _Fabergé_-style eggs.

Maia was curious about how wizards charmed their paintings to move, though she wasn't sure she would want hers to; Remus had suggested making magical copies, to try out the charms that made paintings move, so tomorrow, when she went to the Post Office in Diagon Alley, she was tempted to go into _Flourish and Blotts_ (she was now on first-name terms with the saleswizards there) and ask for a book on magical art.

* * *

><p>Maia meandered around Diagon Alley the next morning, Sirius trotting alongside her; she took some time to stop in <em>Flourish and Blotts<em>—picking up a heavy, luxe book on Wizard art, which provided the spells and charms needed to animate portraits, quilts, paintings and even embroidery—and at the groaning fruit-stall, where the proprietor offered her a very strange little fig-like fruit with a fragrant, firm rind like citrus fruits, but edible, and which opened up to seeds as vibrant and compact as pomegranate arils, but as fragrant and soft as strawberries; he suggested baking them in the oven until the rind split, or, if camping, bury them in the ashes of a fire, and spreading the innards on toast or fresh scones in place of jam. Or eat them whole, cooked or raw. The wizard called them "Fiawsbery pears", and added an extra fruit for luck when Maia purchased a dozen, asking whether they made good jam, and she bought a bag of ripe kumquats, a bag of lemons—she was going to make Moroccan preserved-lemons, and a dish from Amalfi with mozzarella—a bunch of artichokes and a half-dozen blood-oranges and two mangoes.

The Post Office, which Maia had yet to enter into, was dark, full of rustlings and the glint of jewel-bright eyes; easily three-hundred owls stood on their perches, lining each of the walls to the ceiling; Maia wondered about dodging droppings as she made her way to the counter, and about being dive-bombed and carried off by the Great Grey in the rafters who had a nest of fledglings. She cooed over the little nest of Scops owls on the counter, and she asked the witch behind the counter how much it cost to send a letter to Hogwarts: five Knuts for standard delivery; eleven Knuts for a faster owl; and same-day delivery cost one Sickle.

Maia paid a Sickle and handed her letter over to the witch, who attached it neatly to a little leather thong attached to a Barn Owl's leg, and the owl soared out of a back window.

She paused on her way back down the Alley in the Wizarding equipment shop, curious about whether there were any smaller models of the Wizarding wireless, anything that resembled a modern Muggle radio. She had had visions of a pocket wireless made of polished or painted wood, with one of the cute, squiggly antennas she had seen in the little shop dedicated to Dark Detectors, but as far as she could tell, all Wizarding wirelesses were the same, chunky, heavy and obtrusive, _antique_. She had a mind to strip the wireless at Number Twelve, with Sirius' and Mr Weasley's help, and figure out how it worked—and remembered Sirius saying he had enchanted his build-your-own transistor radio to work off magic. Not that she liked Wizarding radio; the music was dull, and she knew so little about the Wizarding world in general—though she was getting better, at what Sirius said was an alarming rate—that listening to the news broadcasts and interviews with famous witches and Quidditch players went over her head.

Ailith had mentioned the other night that Maia was in a unique position amongst wizards: she had been raised in the Muggle world, had spent time in foreign Wizarding cultures, but had been educated in the Muggle system, and she would be able to see things that Wizards wouldn't, even about their own world. Like dragon-captivity, and the treatment of house-elves… But she also noticed, wandering down Diagon Alley, that there were no shops aimed at teenagers. There was _Gambol & Jape's_, and Madam Malkin's had a nice selection of dress-robes appropriate for adolescents, but they weren't specifically for teenagers, and there were no shops specifically catered to teenaged witches and wizards. Even the music played on the wireless wasn't _young_.

There was probably a huge corner in the Wizarding market for shops that sold specifically young-adult clothing-patterns, cosmetics and things like that, because she couldn't find one shop that was devoted specifically to them. One was either a child, or a full-grown witch or wizard. That annoyed her, and her love for fashion and cosmetics had her brain whirring with ideas, especially since discovering Tonks' hand-me-downs, and the pretty robes Ailith usually wore. Her hands itched to paint, and draw, and once at home, Maia pulled out her diary.

She had begun to write things down, ideas and notes, as well as making sketches and detailed drawings, refining her initial painting of the pocket wireless she envisioned: she pulled out her backlog of glossy _Vogue_ magazines, and the copies of _Witch Weekly_ and a witch fashion magazine, her paint-sets, a few jars of water, and started sketching and painting. It was only when Sirius declared it was time for her lesson that she set her paintbrush down, leaving the dozen sheaves of rich watercolour parchment to dry, two coloured designs to each page, with small watercolours for the details.

"Hang on a sec, let me just…" Maia murmured, grabbing her dip-pen to scribble some notes on the bottom of one of the pages: _Sibylla, Kingdom of Heaven_; _Emilio Pucci, Roberto Cavalli_; _lace blazer with sequins_; _velvet trousers with Faberge "Mosaic Egg" beadwork in pearls and crystals_; _Elie Saab silhouettes_; _Boat That Rocked, Midnight Mark leather-trousers and silk shirt, velvet jacket_; _snakeskin blouse, blue Chinoiserie skirt_; _terracotta silk shirt, long, with scarf around waist_; _Marilyn Minter paintings_; _beaded black lace knee-socks_.

"What are you doing?"

"Designing some new clothes," Maia said thoughtfully, smiling up at Sirius. Witches' fashion, for the younger generations, was an eclectic mix, and Maia had never felt more comfortable in her own skin than walking down Diagon Alley, with women in beribboned bonnets, men in their caps and Trilbies, their detailed boots and customised jackets and dresses. Sirius peered closer at the designs she had just coloured.

"You did these?"

"I noticed most witches seem to make their own clothing," Maia said, shrugging, "And I love clothes."

"I noticed you've been wearing some of Tonks' hand-me-downs," Sirius grinned. "They've got Andromeda all over them."

"Do you think she made them?"

"Probably," Sirius smiled. "She always wanted a little girl, Tonks would've been adored in her house. Certainly my cousins were raised to be good with a needle and thread."

"I love that. A few generations ago, every woman knew how to crochet, knit and sew, a lot knew how to make their own clothes," Maia said. "The Fifties was the height of fashion for handmade clothing, it was cheaper than buying it from shops. But nowadays, everyone buys their clothes from shops, they aren't taught how to knit and embroider, or make patterns."

"There are some good things, then, about Wizard culture being slightly backward," Sirius said, his lips twitching.

"Absolutely. I have _never_ seen anywhere quite like Gladrag's," Maia smiled. She glanced over the spread on the kitchen table, the paintings she had detailed, the designs. Sirius picked up the elegant pamphlets from Madame Primpernelle's.

"Cosmetic-making classes?" he said, glancing at Maia with his eyebrows raised. Maia shrugged.

"It might be interesting," she shrugged. "The book I bought on making cosmetics is quite basic—Madame Primpernelle's offers a load of different courses for different things."

"Your brain is going to explode if you keep researching new things every five minutes," Sirius warned, chuckling.

"Repetitive thinking is a death-knell for the mind," Maia replied, standing up and stretching.

"Come on, then; you've got to finish your Bubbling Beverage. We can test it out on Tonks at dinner, if you want," Sirius said, and Maia grinned.

"Cool!" Tonks had such a wonderful sense of humour that between her and Sirius, Maia had already gone through half the products Sirius had encouraged her to buy from _Gambol & Jape's_. Mrs Weasley said she was having misgivings about bringing her sons to Grimmauld Place when the summer started, only because she was worried that Maia and her twin sons would get on like a house on fire. Two hours later, Maia was yawning in the kitchen, talking to Sirius.

"—I think we should really invest in a barbecue. It doesn't have to be a big one, but it's getting ridiculous, always cooking with the oven," she said. She had limited her baking to the early-morning and evenings, so the kitchen didn't become a sauna. But she continued to use the oven for dinner. "I've got lots of recipes that Diane… That Diane used to like, on the barbecue…"

"Well, why don't we do that, then?" Sirius said. "We can put it on the front-step." Maia nodded; she had already moved her herb-planters out onto the front-stoop, so they could get the sun. The doorbell rang upstairs. Remus groaned as Mrs Black's portrait started screeching.

"We really need to get her off the wall," Maia said, pressing her hands to her ears; Kreacher snapped his fingers, and the screeching stopped. Sirius groaned as he hefted himself out of his seat, setting down the fat book of crosswords Maia had picked up for him in _Flourish and Blotts_, and went upstairs to let the visitors into the house. Maia, finishing up her 'homework' and glancing over her coloured fashion-designs, looked up as she heard two familiar, female voices laughing softly, echoing in the stairwell, high-heels clicking on the worn stone steps.

Tonks and Ailith appeared, both decked out in regalia befitting a night out: Ailith, in a watered silk skirt with pleats sewn with black sequins, and a dainty little top; Tonks, knee-high buckled boots, a micro-mini black skirt and a cropped black lace basque. Maia blinked and did a double-take; Tonks' hair now brushed her jaw, deep purple, sleek and streaked with twinkling silver, complementing the punky, alternative outfit with a new set of fishnets sparkling with tiny star-shaped diamantes that Maia fell in love with.

She reached out, grabbed Tonks by the leg, and hauled her closer so she could examine the tiny star beads at various cross-sections of the fishnet. "Hello Maia!" Tonks laughed brightly.

"Did someone forget to mention tonight's meeting has an _informal_ dress-code?" Sirius asked, dropping into the kitchen behind them. "Not that I don't appreciate seeing you all tarted up and ready to go on the pull, but I hardly think the outfits are appropriate for the office."

"The Frabjous Chizpurfles are playing tonight at the Weeping Sunflower," Tonks said, grinning. "We're heading there straight after the meeting. Ailith, being a glorified groupie of old, managed to swipe a few free tickets." Tonks raised her fists into the air in a display of triumphant celebration. Ailith, rolling her eyes slightly and exhaling indignantly at the mention of her being a "glorified groupie", took a glass from Sirius, but Maia raised her eyebrows interestedly.

"There's a whole different side to you, isn't there," Sirius said, gazing at Ailith, whose pretty lips twitched, trying to hide a smile.

"Oh, er, I might also have a favour to ask," Ailith said, glancing at Sirius from the corner of her cornflower-blue eyes.

"What's up?" Sirius asked, smirking softly.

"My building is being fumigated for cockroaches," Ailith said, wrinkling her nose. "I was hoping I could use one of the spare bedrooms."

"I did offer you my sofa," Tonks said, sipping her Butterbeer and glancing from Ailith to Sirius.

"Thank you," Ailith chuckled softly. "But we've tried living together before."

"It wasn't pretty," Tonks sighed, gazing petulantly at the tiled floor. "The Cosmetics Carnage of 2011 will be forever seared into my memory." Maia laughed.

"'Course you can stay here," Sirius said, refilling Remus's glass. "That's what this place is for, after all."

"You're coming tonight," Tonks said, grinning at Maia, who raised her eyebrows, a balloon of delight expanding in her chest.

"Me?"

"Yeah! You'll _love_ the Chizpurfles," Tonks grinned.

"And they'll love you," Ailith remarked softly, eyeing Maia inscrutably.

"Remus, you want to come?" Tonks asked.

"I… I can't, I'm afraid," Remus sighed, glancing at the spread of paperwork in front of him. "I've got too much to do…"

"You need someone to help you with all of that," Tonks said, eyeing the papers shrewdly. Remus sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping. "Have you had any luck?"

"A little," Remus said, glancing up with bright eyes. "I have a few people interested in hearing more. Especially the younger ones, the ones who want a chance."

"Actually, I've got someone who might be interested in talking to you," Tonks said, striding over to Remus and tripping over her own feet, jumping before she stumbled and recovered her step.

"You should really charm your shoes to stop you being so clumsy," Maia remarked, and Tonks shot her a grin as she took the quill out of Remus' hand.

"He isn't one," Tonks said, glancing at Remus, scribbling something on a fresh piece of parchment-notepaper. "But his daughter is. Just happened, I think, only about a year ago. Tiny thing, she is. I've met her; gorgeous little thing, only about five. He brought her in to the office when he demanded the Auror Office do something about Greyback."

"Is he the one who attacked her?" Remus asked, and his voice was darker and more solemn than Maia had yet heard it. He flicked his eyes over Maia, and she had never seen him more riled and upset. She wondered what had him and Tonks so solemn.

"Yeah," Tonks said softly, and her voice was sadder than Maia had heard it before. "He works in Amos' department. What with you having gone to Hogwarts, I think he'd love to hear from you, let him know his little girl can still have a normal life."

"Amos' department, you said?" Remus said, glancing up at Tonks, who nodded. "Does he know?"

"I'm not sure; he's been working extra hours, so he can have that night off every month," Tonks said heavily. "But if we can get him on board, that'd be another in that department on our side."

"That certainly would help. Especially since he has a vested interest," Remus sighed.

"Even more so now," Tonks said, and Remus frowned up at her. "He's Muggle-born; he was a fierce advocate against Umbridge's campaign for that new legislation."

"So _why_ attack her…?" Remus murmured to himself, looking wan and very upset. "Thank you, Tonks."

"Yep," Tonks replied brightly. Maia glanced from her to Remus, wondering what they were talking about; Order business, but usually they kept that sort of thing for meetings, not chatting about it in the kitchen before Maia had left the room. Neither Ailith nor Sirius, who were talking quietly, Sirius chuckling and grinning, told her what Remus and Tonks were going on about, and the other Order members started to turn up, so she didn't have the opportunity to ask. She remained in the hall to admit Mr Diggle, Hestia, Kingsley, then Mr Weasley and Bill, who arrived moments before Mrs Weasley and Til.

For the risk the Order members who worked at the Ministry took in trying to spread the word about Voldemort's latest attempt to return, they were having a lot of success in bringing in new members; "It helps that Voldemort didn't actually manage to return," Sirius had said yesterday. "Otherwise it would be a different matter completely. But there are plenty of people who think the Ministry needs purging. We're still not rid of the scum who infiltrated the Ministry during the War. Wizards like Lucius Malfoy, right up in Voldemort's inner-circle; he still waltzes in and out of the Minister's office as he pleases."

"But isn't Lucius Malfoy a known Death Eater?" Maia had asked.

"Oh, yes," Sirius replied darkly. "Plenty of incredibly nasty things can be placed squarely on Lucius Malfoy. But he bought his freedom; the Ministry turns a blind eye because he's been giving generously to all sorts of things for years, Arthur says. I've heard Malfoy claimed he was cursed, blackmailed."

"And people _believed_ him?" Maia asked, shocked.

"Not everyone," Sirius said heavily. "There are still plenty who are openly hostile to him, and to wizards like him—Nott; Goyle; Karkaroff; Macnair—who escaped imprisonment in Azkaban."

"But how? How could people just…turn a blind eye? They threw you into Azkaban without a second though, but they let people like that go free?"

"Malfoy gave a load of gold to help _rebuild_ the Ministry after he was cleared," Sirius said darkly.

"The Ministry he tried to destroy," Maia scowled. "What kinds of things did Malfoy do?"

"Used the Imperius Curse to control Ministry witches and wizards," Sirius sighed. "Suspiciously grisly murders; he and Bellatrix were two peas in a pod. But old Lucius never had the stomach for some of the things Bella got up to. Soon as Voldemort fell, his protector gone, Malfoy switched sides, pleaded ignorance and enchantment."

"And the Ministry lets him walk free, when he's killed people, blackmailed them and used the Unforgivable Curses?" Maia breathed, aghast. "Surely the families of the people he killed want justice."

"Well, as long as Malfoy keeps giving money to the Ministry, he's protected," Sirius sighed heavily. "Gets him in with the right people. Then he can ask for favours, delay laws he doesn't want passed. He's very well connected, Lucius Malfoy."

Maia had told Sirius about Hitler, and the Nuremberg Trials: she thought Malfoy running amuck and bribing Ministry officials, after the atrocities he had committed, was similar to the letting the twenty-odd Nazis who were tried at the Nuremberg Trials walk free. She had been disgusted that only those twenty-odd Nazis had been tried, when it must have taken thousands to orchestrate the Holocaust.

"Plenty of wizards were never held culpable for their actions," Sirius sighed. "Wizards like Malfoy, wizards who were right up in Voldemort's inner-circle _with_ Malfoy."

"If he suspects Voldemort's getting powerful again…what would Malfoy do? Use his influence in the Ministry?"

"Not sure," Sirius frowned. And then he let slip something Maia was sure he shouldn't have: "We're keeping track of them, of course. Keeping tabs on their activities. And Arthur's orchestrating a few random raids that should catch them off guard, see if we can dig up anything that can impugn them. Now we've got Amelia Bones working with us, her influence will go a long way in bringing people up in front of the Wizengamot." Maia sat back and thought hard, frowning.

"If Malfoy gets influence by giving money…maybe I could make some donations," she said, glancing up at Sirius. She snorted softly. "Maybe I could make a donation to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to clean up their act; and fund new campaigns for centaurs' rights and recognised equality for goblins. And this census idea I've had for house-elves. Then _I_ can ask for favours. Like demanding retrials for those Death Eaters who snaked their way out of Azkaban. Do you think anybody's made a study of what individual Death Eaters who escaped Azkaban are still responsible for?"

"I'm sure there are," Sirius said darkly. "Plenty of the families of the victims from the War want justice, revenge." He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, but before Maia could ask what he didn't seem able to bring himself to tell her, he had changed the subject to her Bubbling Beverage.

Maia had been so focused on remembering her conversation with Sirius that she didn't realise how warm and dozy she was, until something poked her hard in the waist, and Maia jerked upright, going slightly off-kilter when dizziness at her abrupt rise set in; deep-purple hair and twinkly dark eyes caught her attention, and Tonks grinned at her. She had fallen asleep.

"Have a nice nap?" Tonks grinned.

"Wha's goin' on?" Maia slurred. How long had she been asleep? The breeze skittering across the floor was still warm.

"The meeting's over," Tonks grinned. "Kreacher says dinner's in half an hour. So you can get ready to go out." She kicked Maia's trunk open and dislodged a lot of her things, muttering aloud why Maia didn't unpack her things into the dresser. Maia, already disoriented, jumped and flailed, falling with a painful smack out of bed, when Tonks flung something at her head. Tonks laughed.

"You're even clumsier than me when you're tired," she chuckled. "Come on! Up you get. Here, have some Irascible Dragon."

"Some what?"

"Energy drink," Tonks said, and Maia caught the scent of something sweet and metallic, an odd combination; Tonks handed her a squat bottle, and she sipped the drink as she climbed back onto the bed. Whatever an Irascible Dragon was, it tasted delicious. Just one sip, and she was wide-awake, catching the clothing Tonks was flinging at her to try on until she found a suitable outfit. "Come on, get tarted up to go out on the pull. Ales and I thought we'd make a night of it, before all the kiddies come home from school and flood the Sunflower."

"You do realise I'm only fifteen," Maia said, frowning at a blouse Tonks had pulled out of her trunk, tossing it over her shoulder. She went to the dresser, fumbling through the contents.

"I started going out when I was fourteen," Tonks said, shrugging. "One of my mates had his Apparation license, so we snuck into the _Jobberknoll_, after they revamped it. You're telling me you don't go out?"

"I do. I only like rock-nights, though," Maia said. "And I've only gone out to Muggle clubs." She had designed and was working on sewing a black shirt-dress, with clean, sharp lines, and a flirty hemline, those starlight seed-beads she had bought at _Gladrag's_ embroidered to the hem and neckline, which would have been perfect, but as it was she picked out a corset-top her friend had convinced her to buy, on sale, at _Agent Provocateur_ when they had gone to London—it was actually lingerie, made of aubergine guipure embroidery and French stretch silk-satin, named 'Gene'. And she loved it.

She stepped behind the folding-screen in the corner of the room—Sirius had torn the old fabric from it, instead letting Maia line it with corkboard before upholstering it with her own fabric, already pinned with things, and she heard Tonks going through the contents of the dresser, the wardrobe and her trunk, spraying some perfume and making a delighted noise, cooing over something, making thoughtful noises as Maia emerged, drawing her hair up into a loose, curling Grecian bun. Tonks had found several of Maia's most prized books, and had also set a record on; _The Rolling Stones_.

"Sexy lady!" Tonks sang, grinning, when she caught sight of Maia, who dusted off the seat of her trousers, uncertain about them with the corset-top as maybe a little too much, because they were hand-me-downs from Tonks: black, lace-up, and shimmering with patches of silver beadwork, whip-stitched up the sides with black leather cord, sewn with tiny sparkling beads and miniscule sequins on tiny tassels all over; they fit her like a glove, especially around her bum. With the corset-top, Maia wore the trousers with a pair of strappy black heels, showing off the fuchsia pedicure she had given herself days ago when she'd been contemplated floral-scented nail-lacquer, and Tonks grinned.

"This is lovely, by the way," Tonks said, indicating a bottle of perfume Maia cherished; she had collected several favourites in the last few years, primarily _Viktor & Rolf_ and very expensive Parisian _Serge Lutens_; the one Tonks held up was "Flowerbomb", the latest of Maia's favourites. "Is it Muggle?"

"The perfumes and makeup are all Muggle," Maia said, and Tonks grinned as she sat, leaning against Maia's pillows, going through her Muggle records, perfumes and peering interestedly while Maia did her makeup, using brands Tonks had never heard of; Tonks borrowed one of Maia's vibrantly-fuchsia _MAC_ Dazzlelglass tubes.

Maia stuffed her red lipstick into her little violet cross-body bag, with her camera, extra film, her journal, a mechanical pencil, her tiny watercolour set that fit into a mints-tin, her wand and her purse. With the intense heat they were experiencing, she found her delicate bell-jar of "El Attarine" perfume by _Serge Lutens_, dabbing some on a cotton-ball before applying it to her wrists, throat, below her ears and between her breasts.

Tonks liked Maia's pedicure, the corset-top and especially Maia's piercings—she thought they were rather shocking on a girl who loved Arithmancy, baking _pâtisserie_, and Elvis.

"Did they hurt?" Tonks asked curiously.

"The tragus piercing did," Maia admitted, indicating the little gold stud piercing on her left ear. "And these ones here were quite awkward, I had to get them done over five months, to let them heal, and let the swelling go down."

"When my mum did mine, she used charms to ice the cartilage, and then healed the lobes as soon as she'd put the studs in," Tonks mused. "How do Muggles do it?" Talking about the various torture devices needed for specific piercings—telling horror-stories about Maia's friend getting her clit pierced in celebration the day they finished their exams—they made their way downstairs, Tonks carrying Maia's most recent _Vogue_. Maia asked where Tonks' hand-me-down clothes came from—they had indeed been made by Andromeda—but the fishnets Maia so adored had come from a shop in the Crescent, just off the farthest end of Diagon Alley. Maia had recognised Ailith's skirt as Roberto Cavalli, and when they reached the kitchen, she asked the older woman about it—"Shopping and afternoon-tea with my mother is one Muggle tradition I have to keep, or I'd have absolutely nothing to talk about at Sunday lunch," Ailith explained. Sirius turning around at the sound of Maia's voice, his expression was akin to having had his face smacked by a frying-pan.

He blurted, "_Maia_?"

"Yeah?"

"What _are_ you wearing?" Sirius asked. Maia blushed, but put her hands in her pockets, shrugging slightly. Compared to what the other girls at sixth-form wore to _lessons_, she would say that revealing a good bit of cleavage after dark was positively demure.

"You know, you look older than fifteen," Tonks mused. "You could pass for the same age as me."

"It's my height," Maia said; at five-eight without heels, Maia had always been the taller girl in her class, and with her maturity, people rarely took her for anything younger than eighteen.

"She does look my mum, don't you think, Sirius?" Tonks asked.

"She does a bit, yeah," Sirius said, gazing at Maia rather incredulously.

"I'd say she looks rather more like you, Sirius," Ailith said thoughtfully, canting her head to the side as she gazed at Maia.

"So you decided to go out," Remus smiled at Maia.

"I wasn't given much of a choice," Maia smiled, glancing at Tonks, who was rooting through a tiny little beaded bag slung across her torso.

"It's for your own good," Tonks laughed and Maia grinned.

"I'm glad of a chance to wear these trousers—aren't they _fantastic_!" she said, smiling brightly.

"You're lucky Molly's already gone home with Arthur," Sirius smirked. "She'd probably send you back up to your room to change."

"Then I'd just sneak what I really want to wear out of the house, and change before I got back," Maia smirked.

"Classic," Tonks grinned.

"You know, I remember the summer Dromeda stayed with us," Sirius said idly, hand curled around a Butterbeer bottle as he gazed at Maia. "Stumbled back at dawn from a night out after the Muggle milkman had gone round the square."

"She _never_!" Tonks gasped, eyes brightening with an expression of delighted incredulity.

"Everything _I _know, I learned from Andromeda," Sirius said, grinning subtly. "She was a bad influence, back in the day."

"Ooh, don't let Mum hear you say that," Tonks grinned. "She almost hexed me when I mentioned she's nearing the big five-oh."

"She did the same thing when I mentioned that everything would go downhill after her seventeenth," Sirius said, smiling reminiscently. "'Course, I threw Regulus in front of me to catch the jinx, so I was fine." Laughing, Maia dished up dinner, Kreacher helping fill the pitchers and set the table, and they all sat down to eat. It couldn't be plainer that Tonks was excited; Ailith and Sirius were talking and laughing opposite, and Sirius kept grinning, giving his deep, bark-like laugh, eyes fixed on Ailith's beautiful face.

"Come on, let's go," Tonks said brightly. "We've got to get some drinks down our necks before they go on. Or I won't have the courage to go up and profess my undying love to the lead-guitarist."

"I wouldn't," Ailith said, and Tonks' laughter pealed around the kitchen. "I've been there."

"Alright," Sirius said sombrely, fixing Maia with a very stern look. "Before you head out: the rules. No drinking, no drugs, no sex below the nose." Tonks snorted, and Maia laughed. "That being covered, just know that I am living vicariously through all of you, so have the time of your bloody lives!"

"Aren't you coming with us?" Maia asked.

"No," Sirius sighed, and for a moment his shoulders stooped. "I'm going to try and help Remus get through some of this paperwork. So that next time, the geysers don't have to stay at home."

"You're not geysers," Tonks laughed.

"I don't know; Moony's going grey," Sirius shrugged.

"I am not going grey!" Remus blurted indignantly, glancing up quickly, eyes wide. "I just…have the odd silver hair. Don't be home too late," Remus said, glancing at Maia, but he was trying to hide a smirk that made his eyes glitter, and she knew he was teasing.

"Yeah, or you'll have to face Kreacher's wrath," Sirius smirked, "because _I_ won't get up to let you in."

"What d'you want Maia to do, sleep on the doorstep?" Tonks laughed.

"Ah, good times," Sirius remarked, his features softening and illuminating at the thought of some far-off memory. Remus chuckled, and Sirius ushered them out of the house.

"We won't keep her out too late," Maia heard Ailith murmur to Sirius, who shrugged, smiling subtly, as he patted her bum to hasten her out the door.

"I mean it, I'm living vicariously through you," he chuckled. "Have _fun_."

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: I'm too excited for you all to get to chapters fourteen and fifteen! I've _solved_ Sirius' "I'm useless shut up in Number Twelve" dilemma! And it's rather brilliant.


	10. Chapter 10

**A.N.**: Another revised chapter!

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_10_

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><p>Maia was no stranger to going out; in the last year months, she and her friends had succeeded in sneaking into the clubs nearby, mostly because Maia could use magic and charmed the bouncers and bar-staff, but she had always gone out with people her own age—not two women nearly ten years her senior, though, as Ailith said, "You look old enough to have gone to uni with us. If I'd looked like you while I was still at Hogwarts…"<p>

It was a little awkward at first, hanging out with these two witches, outside Grimmauld Place, intending to go to a gig, but when Ailith latched on momentarily to her forearm to guide Maia as they Apparated to a different part of London, they arrived outside the Leaky Cauldron, and Maia's excitement skyrocketed.

Diagon Alley at night was no different than during the daytime, only instead of colourful stalls and bright umbrellas outside the cafés and ice-cream parlours, pubs groaned with patrons, live music blasted, mixed with loud laughter; and the beautifully-tiled fish-and-chip shop was groaning with customers, the magic-heated range cooking up the freshest cod Maia had seen in a while. A stall had been set up outside the butcher's, barbecuing burgers, sausages and strips of steak in crisp homemade rolls; and the little record-shop was busy with young-adults who wanted tickets to see this or that particular band. Ailith stopped here to check in with the proprietor, whom she had gone to Hogwarts with, and who recognised Maia.

Going out for the night wasn't like it was for Muggles; Maia saw very few teenagers, except the ones who were eighteen or nineteen and had already left Hogwarts, and nobody was getting drunk for the sake of being drunk. She never had; she had never been in that kind of group, either, never friends with those kinds of girls who forgot to put on trousers and painted their faces orange with bronzer, falling over their high-heels onto the floor after two alcopops. She had been raised by an ancient relative, in different foreign cultures where alcohol was served with meals in a sociable atmosphere, and if Maia went out, she bought one bottle of admittedly inferior-quality cider, and drank it slowly. She liked best going to the beer-garden at the local pub, or hanging out with friends, talking a lot, dancing, and listening to good music. Last year's Twinwood festival had been _amazing_ because of the atmosphere, and she got the same sense of it in Diagon Alley. People sat about with their drinks at tables on the cobblestones, talking and laughing, young adults and people Ailith's age, and inside music bars, live bands—energetic jive, lively jazz and swing—prompted people dressed up in their best to dance.

The _Weeping Sunflower_ was a larger venue with a stage illuminated by brilliant, continuous mute fireworks, people laughing and sipping their drinks, the music not so loud that normal conversation couldn't be carried out, small tables scattered around the sides of the panelled hall, the walls papered with posters and record-sleeves, metal tiles printed with funny sayings, a dart-board and notice-board that Maia's eyes were drawn to, sitting at a little table while Tonks and Ailith went to get drinks.

Maia loved to watch people; Sirius frequently had to tug on her skirt to get her to stop dawdling along Diagon Alley just watching the world go by. But young witches and wizards in the musical scene were very different to the witches and wizards who frequented the markets and shops in the mornings, in the way they dressed at least.

Maia observed everything, committing things to her journal; the cut of tops, the details of the popular cut of dresses, the personalised details on high-heeled shoes and boots, the accessories. Evening fashion for the younger generation seemed to be an eclectic mixture of Wizard and Muggle styles, the women exhibiting a combination of punk, vintage bombshell, incredibly-detailed couture and sassily girlish styles pulled off with a strut and a wink: wizards, Maia observed, were far more adventurous in their clothing choices than Muggle men, at least of this century; she saw a lot of silk shirts, dragon-hide trousers, beaded velvet waistcoats, Cuban-heeled boots and military-style jackets; almost everyone wore a hat, all of which were very cool, and a lot of very cool accessories that looked handmade. They seemed utterly comfortable in whatever they wore, in a way no Muggle would be quite as relaxed. In her corset-top, the flesh-flashing trousers covered in tiny tassels and beadwork, her shimmering fuchsia pedicure and red lips, Maia fit right in, and she had never felt as comfortable wearing her own style than she did now, curious that the music playing sounded inspired by the likes of Lana Del Rey and _Florence + The Machine_, perhaps because of a chinkling harp, but it featured soft bagpipes in the background and beautiful violins, upbeat despite its wistful prettiness.

Maia went to grab a small table under the octagonal Billywigs dartboard, supplied with a glass of cider, and her journal, and she sat making a lot of hasty, beautifully-coloured watercolour sketches and notes; she wrote down the names of the vendors who sold the items she liked, emboldened to ask the witches and wizards who wore them.

Something about Diane's inexplicable talent of finding someone to talk to anywhere they went—even the middle of the Egyptian desert—must have been encoded in Maia as she grew up, because the music, the atmosphere, being delighted to be _out_ for the night for the first time since her trip to London, because she started talking to anybody who caught her eye. Asking about their clothes was the ice-breaker, and soon her apprehension about going out with two women a decade older than herself melted away. Someone whirled a chair around and plonked themselves down on it, sitting astride it with their arms draped over the back of the chair, grinning handsomely at her as he set his glass down.

"You came in with Ailith," he said, not accusatorily; he smiled, blue eyes twinkling; he wore several etched silver rings on his large, clever-fingered hands, and a chunky dragon-hide watch, and would not have been out of place at a punk concert, with tousled hair the colour of Demerara sugar, very lovely lips and a tiny dimple in his cheek where he'd had chicken pox.

"Yeah, I did," Maia said, smiling as Tonks caught her eye over the man's shoulder, waving and nudging Ailith beside her, whose eyes lighted on the man.

"I'm Jack," he said, offering his hand; he couldn't have been more than his mid-twenties, exceptionally handsome, with a deep warm voice.

"Maia," she smiled, shaking his hand. Ailith approached, bearing a laden tray expertly.

"Wow, Ailith, you've still got the gift," Jack remarked.

"Well, some things you never lose," Ailith said, and as she set three gold shots on the table, the surface of the liquid sparkling as if thousands of tiny pearlescent silver goldfish leapt across it, she fixed Jack with a look, "and some things you lose to the wrong person." Maia raised her eyebrows and hid her face in her pint. Jack suddenly scowled at Ailith, who arched an eyebrow.

"Ouch! You know, you've really turned into an uptight—"

"Don't say it."

"Bitch."

"He said it," Ailith sighed, turning to Maia as she sat down. "That's amazing."

"Hey, you're tired, you snap at me when I'm being adorable to your friend, you're stressed out, you're sad, and I _always_ notice," Jack said, linking a lightly-muscled arm around Ailith's slim shoulders, drawing her effortlessly closer on her bench. His pretty eyes flickering over Ailith's face, Maia felt suddenly like an intruder on a very private moment, Ailith relaxing into Jack, him pressing a lingering kiss on her cheek, murmuring something in her ear. She rubbed her face, and Maia realised how tired Ailith actually did look, perhaps because her friend seemed to have breached her guard.

"Come on, you can tell me," Jack said coaxingly, plying Ailith with one of the pints of cider and black.

"I've told you, I can't," Ailith said, stifling a yawn.

"And I've told you, tell me when the next meeting is," Jack said, lowering his voice. Maia sipped her cider and black, wondering when Tonks would finish talking to someone at the bar and save her from third-wheeling Jack and Ailith.

"I'm not going to do that lightly, Jackie," Ailith said, rubbing her face tiredly and taking a sip of her drink.

"Who says I'm asking lightly?" Jack said. "I've been thinking about it. Why do I do what I do?"

"So you don't have to get a real job," Ailith murmured. Jack pinched her playfully, hiding a smile.

"No, I do what I do to try and make a difference," Jack said, "make people happier. What better way to do that than by helping get rid of _him_?" Ailith sighed, searching Jack's face, which was decidedly earnest, and she eventually smiled, turning to Maia.

"Maia, this is Jack," she said, "the lead singer and guitarist of the Frabjous Chizpurfles. Jack, this is Maia. She's a witch who attended Muggle school, and she's just found out Sirius Black is her uncle."

"Fugitive murderer's niece," Jack said, eyebrows flying up. "Tough break. That's one reputation I wouldn't want to try and live down."

"Yes, well, yours is bad enough," Ailith said, smiling as she sipped her drink, and Jack turned a very deadbeat glance on her as Maia laughed. "Shouldn't you be setting up?"

"We don't go on for another hour," Jack said, checking his watch. "I brought Pip's drum-kit by for him. Have you ever heard any Wizard music?" Jack asked Maia curiously.

"Tonks gave me some doubles from her record collection," Maia nodded. "How did you come up with the name? 'Frabjous' is from a Muggle story."

"The Jabberwocky," Jack grinned. "From _Through the Looking Glass_. I'm a Muggle-born, like Ailith."

"What's keeping Tonks?" Ailith sighed, and Maia glanced over at the bar.

"Oh!" she blurted, setting down her cider, and surged out of her seat. "I'll be back. That looks like the Bat Signal."

"It is," Ailith said, chuckling as she glanced over at Tonks, being harangued by a good-looking wizard.

"You alright, sweet?" Maia asked brightly, slinging an arm around Tonks' shoulders as she approached the bar. She grinned at the wizard who had been slowly making more courageous advances on Tonks. "Thanks for keeping my girlfriend company." To Tonks' amusement, Maia popped a kiss on her cheek. "Otherwise se would've noticed how late I am and she would've left. Sorry I'm late." She linked hands with Tonks, and pulled her away from the bar, leading her to the table. Tonks was laughing as she sat down.

"Thanks!" she giggled, wiping her eyes. "I thought it'd kill the atmosphere a bit if I cursed him!"

"Don't mention it," Maia smiled. They fell into conversation about the Muggle music Maia liked, Jack a little surprised that Maia loved Elvis, jive, _The_ _Kinks_, and _Metallica_.

"Look at her ears!" Tonks said, sipping her drink, and Maia rolled her eyes slightly as she showed her uncommon piercings, which further surprised Jack, even Ailith, because Ailith had seen Maia in her handmade sundresses, a handkerchief over her hair, sewing blinds for a boudoir connected to one of the grander bedrooms (nicknamed the "honeymoon suite"), or kneading dough and singing to Elvis.

Maia hadn't had as much fun in a few weeks. This summer, she had expected to be going out nearly every night, to dancing-lessons, Amateur Dramatics meetings and Pilates at the very least, if not rock-night at C7-T1 or Quay Club, chatting and drinking near-toxic neon Midianites in the heated deck outside Baq Bar and going for piping-hot chips at the end of the night. There had been very few instances when Maia could go out, but when she did, she usually stumbled home at dawn with a camera full of memories, the only one able to record them due to having only one drink she nursed the entire night.

It was fun sitting here, listening to Jack, Tonks and Ailith banter, getting a list of musicians Maia liked the sound of from the playlist put on by the bar-staff; she got chatted up by three wizards, one of whom said he was a professional Quidditch-player, and rescued Tonks several times from different wizards. Maia tried an Opaleye shot, the one with the sparkling, dancing surface, and when the music volume was turned up, Tonks dragged her off to dance. Maia hadn't danced and laughed like this for weeks, too upset to party and her friends too wary of upsetting her to invite her with any conviction.

As Jack's band-mates appeared, Maia was introduced to them as a "fugitive murderer's niece" Maia Black, and while Pip sat drumming to himself, grinning dazedly and reeking of pot, handsome Patch with his slightly dreadlocked, berserker-braided hair that reminded her of Til, laughed with Maia and teased her, argued with her about _Metallica _and _Offspring_,

"The _Offspring_ is your favourite band?" Maia blurted indignantly.

"You listen to Metallica!"

"Metallica is way more substantial than The Offspring!" Maia said, eyes wide.

"It's the same Black Sabbath riff all over again," Patch rolled his eyes, and Maia shook her head exasperatedly.

"The Offspring have like _one_ chord-compression, they used it over and over and popped new lyrics to it and called it a single!" Maia blurted. In penance for insulting his favourite band, Maia had to agree to a game of Billywigs—a game similar to darts, only the fiend who had created the game had filled in each section of the octagonal board with dares. The darts were the shape of odd little bright-blue birdlike creatures with long stings and helicopter-like translucent wings. Maia won. She was renowned for getting things _done_, and her frequent travelling had made her bold in front of strangers, pushing her to try new things.

The atmosphere was so vibrant and energetic that Maia held on to her second cider-and-black for the remainder of the night; her cheeks stung from grinning so much, laughing with the boys and teasing Tonks. Ailith took as many photographs as Maia did, and when the boys took the stage, the last of their band-mates arriving and necking a firewhiskey apiece, Maia watched, and photographed, and danced with Tonks and Ailith as the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_—a name Patch dared Maia to say ten times fast after doing several Opaleye shots—performed several of their old favourites, two brand-new songs, and several of their favourite Muggle covers—including Maia's favourite song by _The Rolling Stones_, "Let's Spend the Night Together".

The second act booked to play that night didn't show up; Jack turned it into a sort of open-mic night, the boys having a rather fantastic back-catalogue of Muggle songs and _Flying Horklump Brigade_ covers, and part of a second game of Billywigs with Tonks and several wizards they had been chatting with had Maia going up onstage, taking over the unused piano, making Tonks and Ailith scream and clap their hands to their faces in ecstatic incredulity as she belted out Adele's, "Set Fire to the Rain", wowing everyone with her "incredible pipes", as Jack dubbed them. The acoustics in the _Sunflower_ were amazing, each instrument beautifully clear, her voice carrying, strong and clear. She couldn't stop grinning, and fell in love with Vittorio's glossy curls as he went wild on his beautiful violin.

Sitting back at their table with Vittorio, the unflappable violinist, Maia nearly spat out a mouthful of cider-and-black when Tonks crinkled her nose, and _her hair changed colour_. Ailith set down her quill to pat her on the back to stop her choking on her cider as she gaped; she hadn't just come to the _Weeping Sunflower_ for a drink; she was writing a piece on the boys.

"_How_ did you do that?" she gasped.

"I'm a Metamorphmagus," Tonks grinned. At Maia's expression, she chuckled, "I can change my appearance at will. It's dead useful; I didn't even have to revise for Concealment and Tracking."

"Can you learn to become a Metamorphmagus?" Maia asked.

"Nah. Metamorphmagi are rare; they're born, not made," Tonks grinned.

When the bar-staff decided to put their records on again, the boys clambered, exhausted, from the stage, climbing into chairs around Maia, Tonks and Ailith, who had bought another round of drinks, and after resting a little while, they all went onto the dance-floor, having a good time, laughing at each other and themselves.

At the end of the night—wanting to leave while the atmosphere was still fresh, not wanting it to devolve into boredom—Maia and Tonks cradled steak sandwiches, clicking their way down Diagon Alley in their heels while Ailith and Jack talked quietly behind them. Maia suspected the Order might gain a few more members before the week was out. Avoiding Tonks, who had a bit of steak dangling from her pouting lips, Jack swooped down to give Maia a tight hug, promising they'd talk again, and silent, incredibly gorgeous Vittorio had to drag him off when he kept hounding Ailith for the name of her new boyfriend, since she wouldn't go home with him "despite our time-honoured tradition!"

Without anybody else hanging around, Ailith and Tonks grabbed Maia by her forearms and side-along Apparated with her to Grimmauld Place; Ailith tapped the front-door of number twelve, and the many locks and chains clicked and slid open. The hall was illuminated with a dim golden glow from several lamps left on, and the house wasn't as quiet as Maia had expected; perhaps her ears were ringing, but she was sure she could hear music playing in one of the upper-storeys, which was probably Sirius with his records.

"Maia, you couldn't put a pot of tea on for us, could you?" Ailith said quietly, glancing around the hall. Maia smiled, and they quietly made their way downstairs, taking care not to wake Mrs Black's portrait, and Tonks was still grinning as she clambered into a seat at the table while Maia boiled the kettle and filled the teapot, setting out teacups and slicing several hot-cross buns in half to toast.

"So, did you have fun?" Tonks asked brightly, smiling at Maia while Ailith buttered herself a hot-cross bun, smiling.

"I did," Maia beamed. She was buzzing with adrenaline, had had so much fun tonight; the band had been amazing, and _fun_. That steak sandwich had been gorgeous, and she had won the ultimate dare challenge game, against a band of rather unruly, eccentric young wizards. "Thank you for inviting me."

"You're welcome," Ailith smiled. "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself."

"We should definitely do this again," Tonks smiled, around a mouthful of hot-cross bun. "The Puffskeins are playing at the Brass Jobberknoll next week."

"The Brass Jobberknoll?" Maia said, glancing up at Tonks as she drained her teacup. "Sirius said he used to go there."

"It was legendary, back in the day," Ailith said.

"I beg your pardon!" said a deep voice, and Maia glanced around, grinning, as Sirius dropped into the kitchen; Ailith looked mildly embarrassed. "Back in the day?"

"It went through bad phase for about five years, but it's under new management now," Ailith said apologetically. "It's a really good atmosphere, and it's free to get in, unless they're hosting a well-known band. Jack loves performing there; the energy is amazing."

"Is it nearly two?" Tonks asked, squinting at the plain carriage-clock on the mantelpiece. "I have to be up at seven."

"Well you'd better get to bed," Sirius remarked solemnly, his lips twitching. "Big-shot Aurors can't be hungover working major cases." Tonks grimaced at him and laughed, before glancing at Maia.

"Would you mind if I crashed in one of the spare rooms?" she asked, grimacing guiltily.

"That's what they're for," Maia laughed softly.

"So, what'd you lot get up to?" Sirius asked, pouring himself a cup of tea.

"Billywigs," Ailith said, glancing up from the article she had been writing, and Sirius chuckled deeply, a handsome grin flashing across his face.

"Oh _really_," Sirius said, understanding illuminating his features, and he grinned.

"Maia won," Tonks said, grinning. "Never would've guessed you're a bit of a daredevil." Maia shrugged slightly, still grinning softly.

"She takes after your uncle that way," Sirius said proudly. "So, how was the band?"

"Absolutely terrible," Maia said softly, gazing at Sirius. "You didn't miss anything."

"Thank you for saying that," Sirius said softly, smiling as he slung an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

"What did you do all night?" Ailith asked.

"Helped Remus with work, and I've been languishing in my room with my records and my firewhiskey," Sirius said.

"A good night, then," Ailith smiled. Sirius gave an enigmatic shrug. When they had finished their tea and hot-cross buns, always a good idea after a night out, Maia showed Tonks to a newly-decorated bedroom, leaving Sirius and Ailith chatting downstairs in the kitchen.

Tugging her nightie on, Maia dropped onto her bed, loving the warm cotton soft and fragrant against her skin, falling asleep with the thought that she would go back to the Weeping Sunflower if she had the chance; that the guys in the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ were _normal_; that she had filled many rolls of film with photographs to develop.

* * *

><p>Next morning, Maia tugged on her dressing-gown, and made her way downstairs, rubbing her face and yawning. Still early, Tonks was drinking tea and making her way through a bacon-sarnie with Ailith, Kreacher humming his way around the kitchen, plating up food for Sirius, snapping his fingers at the kettle so it piped with steam.<p>

"Morning," Maia yawned, climbing into a chair. "Thanks, Kreacher," she added, as Kreacher levitated a bowl of fresh rice-pudding with honey-drenched pistachios and bits of date over to her, with a teacup.

Tonks, her cheek pouched like a hamster, waved a hello to Maia, and Ailith winced as she knocked back a small shot of something poured out of a very dusty cobalt bottle, Sirius smirking.

"We didn't think we'd see you this morning," Ailith said, pouring out a second shot and passing it to Maia. "Hangover cure," she added, as Maia glanced at the tiny glass.

"Actually, I'm alright," Maia smiled.

"That's right; you only had one and a half drinks," Tonks said, after a massive swallow.

"And she's young," Sirius remarked, making Tonks and Ailith give him a dark look they must have learned from each other; Sirius chuckled, turning to his breakfast. Maia took the little cobalt bottle, examining the label curiously. _Magic_, Maia thought, smiling to herself as Ailith capped the bottle and dusted it off before setting it on the mantelpiece beside the carriage-clock.

"I think I might have had a _bit_ too much to drink last night," Tonks said. "Ailith, how about you?"

"I'm in good form, actually," Ailith said. "Actually, last night went better than I'd hoped."

"Oh yeah?" Sirius asked, and Maia noticed the bite to his tone as he glanced quickly at Ailith.

"Yes," Ailith smiled.

"Is Jack going to join the Order?" Maia asked, and Ailith glanced at her quickly, her teacup halfway to her lips.

"Now, why do you ask that?" she smiled. Maia shrugged.

"All that stuff about making a difference," she said. "Jack writes all the Frabjous Chizpurfles' lyrics, doesn't he?"

"And a lot of the music," Ailith nodded.

"If more people listened to that type of music, if they could get it onto the wireless, it would be a very powerful form of communication," Maia said thoughtfully. She laughed suddenly; "We could plan a Wizarding Woodstock!" Ailith laughed; neither Sirius nor Tonks knew what 'Woodstock' was.

Chuckling, Ailith tucked her parchment into a narrow folder of battered Russian-blue leather, and said, "I'd better be off."

"Yeah, I'd better come with you," Tonks said, polishing off the last few mushrooms and baked-beans from her plate, finishing her tea: they both wore their day-robes, unique and colourful, ready to go to work.

"We'll see you tonight," Tonks called over her shoulder, waving. "With a few new members, hopefully!" Kreacher showed them out of the house while Sirius and Maia finished their breakfasts: Sirius asked for a blow-by-blow on Maia's night, and she pulled out her bag, which she had left in the kitchen, and the numerous rolls of film she needed to process.

"You're a photographer too? Is there nothing you're not good at?" Sirius chuckled.

"Rugby," Maia said flatly, glancing up; she chuckled. "I'm not used to being lazy. It's just the way I was raised. My aunt couldn't exactly run after me at the playground… I have a lot of hobbies."

"You've mentioned that before," Sirius nodded. "Do you have everything you need to process the negatives?"

"And print the photographs," Maia nodded. "Upstairs. I don't know where she got it from, but my aunt gave me a set of magic photography equipment." Sirius nodded.

"You could turn one of the upstairs linen-cupboards into a laboratory," Sirius suggested.

"That's an idea!" Maia beamed. "I've been converting the bathroom every time I've needed to print photographs before!" After showering, Maia met Sirius back downstairs; not needing to head to Diagon Alley for anything, the morning was dedicated to developing the rolls of film she had taken last night, and some older ones from her London trip. She developed the films in her sealed black canister, using the potion Sirius had taught her to make from the book they had picked up in Diagon Alley, and the ingredients Remus had asked for in the apothecary. Washing the negatives free of potion, she pinned them from a string across the ceiling of the warm airing-cupboard on the second-storey to dry, weighting them with clips. While she had been doing this, Sirius had been light-proofing the same cupboard, removing the linen to another so Maia could bring out the chunky enlarger, and he helped run several strings across the length of the wall, with felted clothes-pegs to hang photographs from.

After their daily lesson—Transfiguration, and a little bit of Charms—Sirius went to get a selection of records to listen to, while Maia went up to what was now her photography studio. She came back downstairs with a dozen photograph negatives coiling and streeling through the air around her, and she sat with a pair of very sharp scissors and a pair of soft gloves, carefully cutting the negatives into strips, housing them in special plastic envelopes. She labelled each, with the notes from the canisters, and the date they had been taken. In the wizarding-equipment shop, Maia had discovered a box of photography paper that only became light-sensitive with the use of a specific charm, already coated with potions to develop, stop and fix the photographs. Having read the instructions in the kitchen, Maia went back upstairs and used the charm to activate the light-sensitivity, and, using the enlarger, made contact-sheets of all of her negatives.

Fascinated by and adoring of the ease with which she could print photographs using magic, the sheer lack of _mess _due to the fact that the paper was already treated with potions, and she intended to go and get her little magnifying loupe to view the contact-sheets when Sirius emerged from the gallery.

"Haven't got anything good to read, have you?" he asked grumpily. Maia smiled.

"I'm sure we can find something," she chuckled, and he followed her to her room: it was now completely redecorated, with false 'panels' of pretty powder-blue trimmed with elaborate white 'frames', each featuring a hand-painted posy of Maia's favourite flowers set into a pale-yellow oval, above the richly-polished rosewood panelling; off-white organza embroidered with warm golden-beige leaf and barley-husk motifs created the blinds, and delicate white curtains printed with different-size pinkish-fuchsia flowers; Kreacher had polished the chandelier and wall-sconces until they shone, and had fixed her huge corkboard to the wall between the two tall windows, under one of which stood her leather-topped desk, at an angle, with her antique oval-mirrored brass shaving-stand with decorative cast-iron feet in the corner, beside which stood a polished little occasional table with a drawer, inlaid with delicate motifs in contrasting woods and gilt, on which some of her cosmetics and perfumes stood. She had propped a few of her watercolours neatly on the ledge running along the top of the panelling around the room, with several record-sleeves and postcards. And she had brought out her own personal trinkets collected from her travels, as well as pretty things from around the house, to decorate the room, with a few little vases of flowers from the Hobbit-hole meadows, and photographs.

Sirius helped Maia bring out some of the boxes of books Professor Dumbledore had packed up in the larger trunk, to go alongside the staggering quantity of books which now rested in neat columns to the top of the panelling along several walls.

"How many books do you _own_?!" Sirius stared around. At home, just around her own desk alone there were always about ten columns of books, more tossed about on the floor, piling up but tumbling over the floor, caught under the legs of her chair, her feet, sticking out from under her bed, stacked from floor to ceiling.

"I read a lot," Maia said. An understatement. "Plus, my aunt collected books all her life, and she was _ancient_. Even older than Professor Dumbledore." Sirius raised his eyebrows. "I think there are more, too; in the library at the Big House," Maia said thoughtfully, glancing at the books her aunt had read through. "But I've never been there."

"Never been to your grandparents' house?" Sirius said, glancing at Maia from the corner of his eye.

"No," Maia said softly. "My aunt wouldn't go there; she said she couldn't, after the tragedy. She never talked about it." Sirius sighed softly, then frowned at some of the titles of her books. A lot of the new ones she had bought at _Flourish and Blotts_ were kept in the study; these were the ones she had collected on her travels, as well as Muggle books.

"You weren't lying about being multilingual," he said, picking up several books.

"Do they teach languages at Hogwarts?" Maia asked.

"None at all."

"_None_?" Maia shook her head, disbelieving. "How can you go into International Relations?"

"I don't know," Sirius chuckled. "The only job I ever had was tearing cinema tickets!" They went through a selection of boxes filled with books; bringing out her aunt's vast collection of magical histories and biographies on the great people of Wizarding history. And, because Sirius asked how Diane had taught Maia languages, Maia brought out the exquisitely beautiful, detailed and playful workbooks Diane had created to teach Maia languages, Arithmancy, Astronomy and Ancient Runes, as well as reading, writing, maths and wizarding history. They were all beautifully illustrated, detailed and personalised.

Though she had been no witch, her aunt had been greatly involved in Wizarding culture—at least, she was one of the foremost experts on Wizarding biographies. _Had been_, Maia corrected herself. Sirius suggested putting all of Maia's literary collection in the library as soon as they could bring themselves to start working on it, and he went through Maia's vast collection of fairytale-books and fiction novels, some of Diane's workbooks that had begun to teach her different languages, even more recipe-books, books on photography, fashion, interior-design and Muggle history, music and art. The sheer breadth of Maia's interests was visible in her personal library, with books on philosophy and Law amongst fashion magazines, books on obscure moments in history, cookbooks and art books, books in foreign languages, books on chess and theology, Greek mythology and Astronomy alongside maths texts and satirical Wooster novels, and a collection of fictional novels, some dedicated to a supernatural world, _Immortals After Dark_.

Sirius picked out a handful of books he thought looked interesting, and Maia brought her loupe downstairs with her contact-prints and her diary, in which she made notes of which photographs she wanted to print. Jack, Ailith and Tonks were exceptionally photogenic, and she had captured several excruciatingly wonderful photographs of the boys in the band.

At several points, someone else had taken hold of her camera, capturing frames with her in the pictures. She was very glad one of the films had been processed with the special colour process, and her camera was always so meticulous at picking out every tiny detail, it even got the leaping droplets on the top of their Opaleye shots; the beadwork on her trousers; the tiny star diamantes on Tonks' fishnets; individual sequins on Ailith's skirt; each of Patch's incredibly luxurious eyelashes; the tiny etched details on the beads on some of his berserker-braids; and the incredible vividness of Jack's and Ailith's blue eyes; the vibrating strings of Apolleon's bass-guitar, and the detail of the tattoo on his arm; the tiny planets circumventing twelve exquisitely tiny gold hands on Jack's chunky watch; every glossy sheen of Vittorio's long mane of brunette curls as he went crazy on his polished, engraved-backed violin, which he had let Maia play only after she had promised she would treat it like her own firstborn. There were several photographs taken while she had been onstage, singing and playing the piano, which looked…incredible. But some of the best photographs were of Jack, singing into his microphone, and one of Tonks and Ailith beaming at the camera was particularly beautiful.

Fidgety to get printing, too excited by the amazing photographs, Sirius chuckled, said he was fine with his music and the books Maia had given him, and until it became time for Order members to start showing up for the meeting, Maia remained in her new studio. She carried an armful of fresh prints downstairs with her, and opened the door when someone knocked. The first to arrive was Mrs Diggory, whom Maia had met only twice since she had been at Grimmauld Place, as Mrs Diggory had odd hours, working as a Healer at St Mungo's Hospital.

In quick succession, the working-day having ceased, more and more members were admitted into the house, gathering now both in the kitchen and the dining-room, due to sheer numbers. Maia had thought about getting a start on the drawing-room, but she and Sirius had exchanged a look, grimaced at the idea, and decided to put it off. She and Kreacher went around refilling pitchers, putting out more food, and she was there when Professor Dumbledore arrived, shepherding a handful of newcomers.

Aside from a very pretty older blonde witch in meticulously-tailored robes who worked in the International Magical Office of Law, an olive-skinned man named Lance wearing a vibrant dragon-hide jacket, who worked in the Department of Magical Games and Sports (and took it as a personal affront and beat Maia with a rolled-up _Which Broomstick_ magazine when he discovered Maia had never heard of Quidditch until ten days ago), and a curvy lady in glittery turquoise high-heels, Jack, Appoleon, Vittorio and Patch were also ushered into Number Twelve.

Patch, Maia discovered, was Til Hughes' brother, though they had been estranged for quite a few years due to a disagreement over a girl called Gemma. Ailith arrived, Summoning the magazine from out of Lance's hand so he couldn't continue to swat at Maia.

"Sorry I couldn't get you in the paper today," Ailith said, sweeping her long hair over her shoulder. "Ainsley had a big article on the _Weird Sisters_' bassist getting engaged." She rolled her eyes, then smiled and accepted a glass of Butterbeer from Sirius, leaning in to kiss his cheek in welcome. "Thank you. You're in tomorrow, though."

"Any coverage is coverage," Jack said, grinning. Vittorio discovered the stack of photographs Maia had just printed, which she had set on the dresser out of the way, and he frowned, before turning to Jack, who set down his beer, his jaw dropping as he went through the photographs, rhapsodising with Patch and Appoleon.

"I haven't managed to process my films yet," Ailith said, looking over Sirius's shoulder as he went through the large seven-by-nine prints, her hand curled over his shoulder, cheek resting on her fingers. "I'd love to trade prints with you though… Could I get a copy of this one?" She held up Maia's favourite photograph of Jack, with Patch, Appoleon and Vittorio playing away behind him, two of Pip's cymbals shining in one corner. "This would really draw attention to the article. God, you're photogenic, boys!"

"Have it," Maia said, smiling. "Those are just a few prints I made. I got about five rolls of film last night."

"Where did you process these?" Ailith asked curiously.

"A cupboard upstairs," Maia said, then beamed, "Sirius light-proofed it for me, so I can use it as a studio." Ailith looked thoughtful for a moment.

"Would you mind if I asked to borrow it for an afternoon," she said, giving Maia a sweet smile. She looked hesitant for a second, glancing at the photograph, saying to Sirius, "If you don't mind waiting a moment, I'm just going to nip back to the office; if I can get there on time, I should be able to slip this into the layout for tomorrow's paper." And she made her way out of the house, Disapparating on the bottom-step.

The kitchen was filled with chatter and laughter; now that the house was far more appealing physically, it seemed the more people wanted to stick around, and the happier and more enthusiastic they were. When Ailith had returned, followed by Bill Weasley, Hestia Jones, Sturgis Podmore and, lastly, Kingsley, Vittorio silently caught Maia before she made her way to the stairs, and handed her a fat manila folder stuffed with sheet-music. Maia glanced at him, saw Vittorio wink subtly, and smiled before she stuck her nose into the folder, examining the names of Wizarding composers she had never even heard of, going through the selections for both violin and the piano.

Taking her photographs back upstairs, Maia paused on the first-floor, in the new music-room. She had set up her music-stand and a chair by the piano, so she could practice her violin, but it was upstairs, and she put a concerto on the piano-stand, sat down, and started playing. It was _incredibly_ beautiful music, and she actually felt quite upset that she had never been allowed to hear it before, and was still playing when someone knocked on the door; Jack grinned. "I followed the music," he chuckled. "That the first time you've played that concerto?"

"Yes."

"_Really_?" Jack's eyes widened.

"I've never heard of any of these composers," Maia said, finishing the concerto and flexing her fingers, glancing from the folder of sheet-music to Jack, who was gazing around the room, at the sheet-music neatly organised in the two glass-fronted cabinets either side of the fireplace.

"Sirius sent me up to get you. Says you've got to meet the new recruits before they head off," Jack said, and Maia followed him downstairs to the dining-room, where Vittorio was sipping red wine. In first-come-first-serve fashion, those who had arrived earliest for the meeting had claimed the chairs at the dining-table, which was spread with papers, what looked like building floor-plans like architects would create, bottles of wine, Butterbeer, jugs of cordial and platters of sandwiches and the triple-tiered silver cake-stand full of sweet things.

"I must say, it's lovely to have a live concerto playing in the background while we go over plans," Professor Dumbledore said; his eyes twinkled as she gazed at Maia.

"I wasn't too loud?" she asked, flushing.

"No, not at all," Remus smiled. "We all enjoyed it." Many of the adults present for the meeting had to go off home, to meet family-members or get on with paperwork. Mr Diggory remained behind, despite his wife heading for home, to talk quietly with Remus for a little while, and a greater number of the Order left once Professor Dumbledore departed; Maia thought there was a general consensus among the members that nothing interesting would be brought up when Professor Dumbledore wasn't at headquarters, and the few who remained were introduced to Maia: Lance, the wizard from the Department of Magical Games and Sports; Adele Jones, the witch from the International Magical Office of Law; and Madam Rosmerta, who ran the pub called _The Three Broomsticks_ in Hogsmeade, which Maia knew by name as the epicentre of a goblin rebellion.

The boys left, heading to a practice session with Pip, and soon it was only Mr and Mrs Weasley and Bill in the kitchen, Tonks showing people out while Remus carefully wrote out a letter at the table, and Ailith borrowed Maia's photography equipment to process her films.

"I think it might be worth us getting an owl," Remus said, glancing at Sirius, who grunted, eyeing his hand of cards.

"I can take that to the Post Office tomorrow if you want," Maia offered, glancing at the letter Remus was now sealing with wax.

"Actually, I'm on duty tomorrow, again," Remus said. "That would be very helpful, thank you." Maia smiled.

"We can go into Eeylop's to have a look at the owls they've got," Sirius said, setting his hand of cards down; Ailith exhaled in annoyance, biting her lip thoughtfully before setting a single card down, shooting Sirius a dazzling smile as he clenched his jaw and tossed his cards down, arms folded over his chest as Ailith took the little stack of Sickles. Sirius glanced at Maia. "Why don't we have a day off tomorrow?"

"A day off?" Maia blinked. The concept was absurd.

"Yes. Have a lie in; we can go to the allotment, then have an ice-cream at Florean Fortescue's," Sirius smiled. There were times, when Maia went to Diagon Alley with Sirius, that he would disappear if she went into certain shops; he would always return within about twenty minutes, but she knew he was using his disguise to learn about the goings-on in Knocturn Alley, the grubby little dark alley he had told her sold specifically Dark items, because she had heard his voice, in long discussions, during several meetings. "You can have your lesson after that, and we can work on those bedrooms on the fifth-floor before dinner."

"D'you still want to go to the cinema at some point?" Maia asked: they had stopped by the theatre down the street yesterday, on the way back from Diagon Alley, and Maia had memorised the showing times and the films. Only the upcoming _Brave_ and _Hotel Transylvania _appealed to Maia, who hated Kristen Stewart more than she loved Chris Hemsworth, therefore _Snow White and the Huntsman_ was out. She was counting the days until _The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey_, _Oz: The Great and Powerful_ and _Quartet_.

"You said the films out now are crap," Sirius said.

"Oh yeah," Maia said heavily. everything in London was gearing up for the Olympics—she had told Sirius about them, and they were going to set aside an evening to watch the Opening Ceremony on her television, Sirius having used magic to siphon Muggle free-view channels to his own magic-powered television, back when he'd had his own flat. "Well, we could set up your projector and watch something. You've got an amazing collection."

"I do, I do," Sirius grinned. "Were you going to HMV to get some of those DVDs we talked about? The Hunger Games?"

"With _Liam Hemsworth_," Ailith sighed, holding a hand over her heart as her eyelashes fluttered.

"You're a _Hunger_ _Games_ fan?"

"I've got a cousin who's obsessed with Peeta. So I read the books; I don't think you can be _fans_ of ritual infanticide," Ailith said thoughtfully.

"You've not been a class prefect," Maia said drily, and Ailith chuckled.

"No," she smiled.

"I _sobbed_ over Rue, watching the film. And I will marry Gale," Maia said thoughtfully. She sat up straighter, eyes wide, a sudden thought coming to her. "D'you reckon I could Apparate right into Liam Hemsworth's bedroom, wrapped in a big red _bow_?" The others burst into laughter at the expression on her face. When their laughter subsided, Remus was smirking.

"_What_?!" Sirius exclaimed.

"Oh, I was just thinking about Professor McGonagall's birthday in our sixth year," Remus said, and after blinking for a second, _Sirius_ _giggled_.

"I'd forgotten about that," he giggled again.

"Minerva hasn't," Remus said drily, and Sirius descended into laughter. "When I taught at Hogwarts she asked me specifically _not_ to send her any gifts on her birthday. I tried to explain that it was James who had forced you into that box after using the _Petrificus Totalus_ jinx on you."

"It was not! That was you!" Sirius barked, laughing. "James was the one who stripped me! The detention was understandable," Sirius remarked thoughtfully. "The screaming was just undignified."

"You were sent as a birthday strip-o-gram to Professor _McGonagall_?" Tonks gazed incredulously at Sirius, with something close to reverence.

"Oh, wait till I tell the twins that!" Bill said, his eyes sparkling with delight as he laughed, wiping his eyes.

"That's brilliant," Ailith laughed softly, gasping in a slightly awed voice, "I wish I could have seen her face!"

"You can!" Remus said, grinning softly, eyes twinkling. "James and I took photos!"

"Unfortunately, McGonagall didn't seem to find it quite as funny as Moony and Padfoot. To say she didn't appreciate the sentiment is a tragic understatement," Sirius said, and Maia laughed. "It took three weeks for me to regain my dignity."

"Three weeks, and the Oldman twins," Remus remarked quietly, turning a page of one of his ancient books.

"The Oldman twins!" Sirius grinned lazily. "Good times." He glanced at Maia, catching her eye, and grinned, "I had Steven Tyler for a role-model." Maia laughed into her glass, shaking her head, setting her glass down before she could spill the contents.

"That explains a lot," Ailith said thoughtfully, glancing at Sirius.

"You must've been a right terror to share a dorm with at Hogwarts," Tonks remarked, gazing at Sirius, then at Remus.

"No comment."

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: PLEASE SEND NICE LONG REVIEWS!


	11. Chapter 11

**A.N.**: Oh, in order for the timing to work for Remus' transformation, and Maia getting to the house before it, I've pushed the Third Task of the Triwizard Tournament back to mid-May. 3 June, 2012 is the night of the full moon…and I always write things for HP in the year that _I'm _writing them. Because otherwise it's confusing, and quite frankly, who likes 90s fashion?

For _Marlicat_, _Luc324_ and _DrAnime203_, because you all submitted great reviews!

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_11_

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><p>Maia cut out and saved the article Ailith had written on the <em>Frabjous<em> _Chizpurfles_, which did indeed feature the photograph Maia had taken—with acknowledgement for it, too, "_Photograph Courtesy of Maia Black (see Inset)_": Ailith had found a photograph of Maia singing, and added it, about three inches big, in the corner of the boys' photo, and had mentioned her getting up to sing with Jack, but the long article rapturously detailed the gig.

Sirius read the article with a distinct expression of disgruntlement, then frowned, pushed the paper aside, and didn't even take a stab at his daily crossword, "one of the few things I live for", he had told Maia a few days ago. She had begun to suspect, with the amount of time Sirius and Ailith spent with each other, and how often Sirius was prone to laugh with Ailith, that Sirius was rather quite taken with beautiful Ailith. And she wasn't sure the sentiment _wasn't_ reciprocated by Ailith.

As Sirius had suggested, they spent a "lazy day"; they began the morning at nine rather than seven a.m., only getting up to open the door, half-asleep, to whoever it was who had left a message for Dumbledore and a report on what had happened while they were "on duty", and Kreacher had made them breakfast. Maia and Sirius had visited her home—Sirius loved being able to sprawl out in the flower-strewn meadow, basking in the sun, while Maia picked vegetables, checked on her bees, and collected fruit; she was systematically going through the picked fruit, turning it into jam, marmalade and vegetable chutneys and piccalilli. As Padfoot, he would pelt around the meadows, tail wagging, while she cycled to the coast; muscles, or fresh seafood from the bi-weekly food markets in Diagon Alley, became a staple in their house, and Maia got to be creative with sweet, spicy marinades for shrimp, making a variation of _coq au vin_ on barbecue skewers rather than as a stew, and lamb keftas, fresh scallops poached in water with carrots and pepper, slathered with a thinned mustard-mayonnaise, and served with chunks of fresh homemade bread.

She made a batch of simple dough for pasta, leaving a diced butternut squash marinating in olive-oil and salt, intending to teach Tonks how to make fresh ravioli for dinner tonight, and Sirius accompanied her to Diagon Alley with the letter Remus had asked to post for him. She sent it via the faster Owl Service: and Sirius upset a lot of the owls in _Eeylop's_, but they came out of the shop with a rather regal Spotted Owl that Maia wanted to name Borgia, which made Sirius scoff bemusedly as he trotted alongside her to Florean Fortescue's.

Maia had found the box-set of the first series of _The Borgias _one of her friends had gifted her, and finally unwrapped it and made herself watch the first episode—and become instantly infatuated with Cesare striding around in his leather trousers. But she was a fierce admirer of Jeremy Irons, who played Rodrigo Borgia, or Pope Alexander VI as he became known, so the name 'Borgia' was given to the owl.

"Maia!" someone called delightedly; unused to having her name shouted out in the middle of Diagon Alley, Maia glanced around, then grinned when she saw who it was.

"Hello, Ailith," she beamed, tucking her sunglasses on top of her head. Ailith sat outside Florean Fortescue's, under a large fuchsia umbrella, sampling a small pink ice-cream, papers spread out in front of her. "Busy working, then?"

"I thought I'd treat myself, it's so nice," Ailith smiled. "Want to join me?"

"Alright," Maia smiled, setting down the owl-cage, her wicker-basket, and her journal (which she had brought out to note down the price of the Wizarding wireless in the equipment shop, and the name of the amazing carpenter who had a stall set up with the most beautiful hand-crafted, inlaid furniture and boxes she had ever seen. "Mind if I go and choose something?"

"No, go ahead," Ailith smiled; Sirius had padded around to her, and had his muzzle resting on her knee, while she idly scratched his ears. Maia smirked as she walked into Florean Fortescue's; Sirius' tail had been wagging. She picked out a two-scoop cone with amaretto and Fiawsberry Pear gelatos, and got Padfoot a little dish of Butterbeer ice-cream. Ailith teased him with it, offering him little bits on a spoon, and he ate it neatly from her hand after giving her a very expressive look (for a canine).

"What do you write in there?" Ailith asked, nodding at Maia's diary. "I've seen you with one before, though it was a different colour."

"I know, I've already gone through a whole one since moving here. It's…just my diary," Maia said, flushing softly. "I write, notes, essays on what I'm studying independently. I annotate poems and put in photographs and magazine cuttings. Mostly I do my paintings, or little studies and colour-schemes for them. In fact, I was wondering if there's a wizard art-shop anywhere around, so I can refill my paints."

"Haven't Remus or Padfoot taught you refilling charms yet?" Ailith asked, and Maia raised her eyebrows.

"No."

"One of them should be in one of your N.E.W.T.-level _Standard Book of Spells_," Ailith said. "It was _hugely_ popular when we'd have House parties after Quidditch games. Anyone who'd managed to sneak alcohol found themselves using the charm to refill the bottles."

"Cool," Maia grinned, her eyes illuminating.

"But if you wanted fresh paints, you could try the apothecary. I had a dorm-mate whose parents used to send her fresh paints, made at the apothecary. They were beautiful."

"_Really_?" she asked, intrigued; Ailith shrugged.

"Yep," Ailith smiled. "Will you show me some of your paintings?"

"Oh, they're just… They're just little doodles, really," Maia said.

"I've seen the ones you've been doing for fairytales," Ailith smiled warmly. "They were absolutely beautiful. They reminded me of an old Edmund Dulac fairytale book my grandmother passed down to me."

"I love Edmund Dulac," Maia smiled. "And I've been…sort of trying out my skills at animating the paintings with different charms…" She opened her journal to one of the previous pages, which she had been working on two nights ago, where she had coloured preliminary studies of Rapunzel, her features, dress and home.

The spells in the heavy book she had bought on Wizard art had worked; Rapunzel played with her long, long hair, smiling sweetly, swishing her skirts and gazing at the little bluebird Maia had painted, which flew into her outstretched hands.

"_Red_ hair?" Ailith smiled, glancing up from the journal she had taken into her hands to examine. Maia had given _her_ Rapunzel deep red hair like polished garnets.

"I was going to give her honey-brown hair," Maia said, sighing as she licked her ice-cream. "But Bill was sitting with his back to me while he chatted with his mum, and his ponytail just kept catching my attention." Ailith chuckled.

"Have you done any more?" she asked, combing gently through the previous pages, pausing as she came across the illustration of the crackling fire-coloured phoenix Maia had animated, and the studies Maia had made of the Order members, the illustrations of the Diagon Alley shops the first time Maia had seen them, and older paintings.

"A few years ago, I read this article in the paper, about this small company that hand-binds and numbers each of the books they print," Maia said, glancing at Ailith. "I got this idea that, you know, you can't get beautiful fairytale books. No illustrations like Edmund Dulac, nothing really entrancing. I thought, why not hand-illustrate fairytales, and hand-bind them? There'd be a place in the market, I'm sure there would be."

"In the Wizarding market, too," Ailith said thoughtfully, going through the pages of Maia's journal, coming across early ideas for Beauty from _Beauty and the Beast_, and Bluebeard's wife, as well as various designs for Sleeping Beauty. "These are _wonderful_!"

"I did a few watercolours for each of my favourite fairytales for my GCSE Art coursework," Maia said thoughtfully. "My teacher wanted us to experiment with different techniques, so I tried Edmund Dulac, Van Gogh and Marilyn Minter."

"If you were to publish them, how would you bind them?" Ailith asked curiously.

"I was thinking hardback books, bound with cotton, dyed in soft colours, each one specific to the story," Maia said, taking the journal so she could flip back to one of the first few pages, showing Ailith the plans. "With a plain front, the name stamped in gold or silver on the spine. I'd have the illustrations to be on rich matte photo-paper." She sat back in her chair, gazing off into the distance. Ailith smiled warmly.

"You could still do it, you know. No wizards know Muggle fairytales; they'd be considered wonderful novelties, especially with these illustrations. And, you know, with your language skills, you could even translate them and introduce them to foreign Wizarding markets." Maia smiled; though she had enjoyed the idea of publishing her fairytales, she had thought they would be doomed only to decorate her own child's nursery. She really did believe there was a place in the market now dominated by eBooks for beautiful, handmade fairytale-books for children. Ailith flipped back to the back of the diary, to Maia's last entry.

"What's this?" Ailith asked, glancing at the page; Maia sat up a little straighter, and glanced at Ailith.

"Um… It's this…idea that I had," she said, blushing slightly, glancing at Sirius. She hadn't told anyone about it, not even Sirius, who liked to read her diary once she'd finished working in it each night, especially if she had been painting. "I was thinking about how there's very little aimed at teenaged witches and wizards, and nothing that can help them assimilate with Muggles, or teach them about Muggle culture—films, music, fashion, that sort of thing. _Fun_ stuff. So I thought, what about a small magazine, with people writing about Muggle books, fashion, films and music, and just…things that are going on in the Muggle world, like the royal wedding and the anniversary of the _Titanic_ and the Olympics, and, I don't know, bits of Muggle history. And _games_; Padfoot had never heard of _Scrabble_ or _Monopoly_, or _Clue_." She scoffed softly, and Sirius snorted softly, frowning indignantly at her even in doggy-form. "I went into Flourish and Blotts with Remus the first time I came to Diagon Alley, and I saw the section on Muggle Studies." Ailith laughed.

"Ridiculous, isn't it," she smirked. "When I was at Hogwarts, I was the one everyone went to when they needed help with their homework if they took Muggle Studies. I had to stop myself bashing my brains in against a wall, some of the questions they asked me."

"It seemed like all Wizards learn about is how Muggles do things without using magic, but they don't focus on the Muggle _culture_," Maia frowned. "I find that very annoying. The tone of some of the books I flicked through, it's like they believe Muggles are no better than Muggles think gorillas are in a zoo." Ailith gave her a look that said, clearly, many wizards _did_ believe just that. She sighed, shaking her head. "And yet _wizards_ are the ones who en_slave_ house-elves." She wondered briefly when she would receive a reply from Hermione Granger; Remus had mentioned that Hermione, one of the brightest witches of her age he'd ever met, took exams very seriously, and at Hogwarts they were now right in the midst of the exam-period.

"Why don't you start this magazine?" Ailith asked, smiling warmly. Maia laughed.

"On top of seeing to Padfoot and Remus's every whim and desire," Maia said; Ailith chuckled.

"Well, you've got the day off today," Ailith smiled, as Sirius yawned, and trotted off. Maia watched him go, noting that Ailith _didn't_, as if she had expected him to wander off. "I think Padfoot and Remus are a bit worried you're overworking yourself."

"I'm used to doing everything at home," Maia said quietly, and Ailith smiled.

"I've heard," she smiled. "So, tell me about these other ideas of yours. You said you have others."

"Oh… Yeah." She told Ailith about wanting to create a palm-sized pocket wireless that looked beautiful, with better sound-quality than the one in Grimmauld Place—even if she didn't like the programmes. She asked Ailith to tell her about her time at Hogwarts, as she had only heard from Sirius and Remus, who were _blokes_, and Maia made a point of asking what Ailith would have _wanted_ at Hogwarts, what clubs or activities, because she wanted to know what was _lacking_. And she was weighing her options.

Professor Dumbledore was her legal guardian—but he didn't take an active role in her 'upbringing'; perhaps he knew she was already too much her own person to try and interfere. She knew her own mind, as Remus had once said. And she had come to the conclusion that if she could take her exams whenever, she could continue to study at Number Twelve with Sirius.

The only drawback of homeschooling was, of course, a continued isolation from her peers. Attending Hogwarts ensured socialisation with witches and wizards her age.

Ailith told her that there had never been any social functions at Hogwarts. The odd party after a particularly brutal win on the Quidditch pitch seemed the extent of the parties, and going out with someone entailed snogging in darkened corridors, getting caught groping by the bad-tempered caretaker and getting detention, and waiting for the term visits to Hogsmeade village. Mrs Weasley had mentioned that a Yule Ball had been the feature of last Christmas, with the Triwizard Tournament, but Maia wondered how much socialisation had occurred between the visiting students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, if they continued to take their lessons separately and lived outside the castle. The Yule Ball was the first time Ailith had ever heard of a large party. A boarding-school, Hogwarts hosted no dances, no parties, and each of the four Houses spent their free-time in password-protected common-rooms. No one from another House was invited into other students' common-rooms. Maia had been stunned Hogwarts offered no language lessons, but she gaped, hearing that there were no classes for things like textiles, music, cooking, literature or Art.

Receiving her A-Levels should have ensured Maia's freedom. She hadn't had to wear a uniform since starting sixth-form college, and was a social being accustomed to parties, cycling to town to meet friends for fish-and-chips, going on day-trips to London, enjoying weekend-long festivals and going to rehearsals for the Amateur Dramatics Society in the village, going to casual dance lessons, rock-night… The prospect of being secluded in a draughty Scottish castle made her skin crawl with chilly goose-bumps despite the heat.

When Ailith checked her dainty gold watch, and grimaced that she had to get back to work, Maia picked up her cage, her basket, and tucked her diary in her bag as Sirius trotted over to them; he licked Ailith's hand once, before Maia walked with her back to the _Daily Prophet_ office, and Maia thanked her for inviting her to sit with her, and talking with her. She was still trying to wrap her head around the monastic existence of Hogwarts teenagers.

"I thought you and Ales would _never_ stop!" Sirius barked a laugh as he dropped into the kitchen, twenty minutes later.

"I like her," Maia said thoughtfully. "She had a lot of good ideas."

"Like that one about you publishing your fairytales," Sirius nodded. He glanced at her, as he pulled out the little silver teapot and two sage-green and gilt teacups, which Maia had saved from his purge of the house. "You've never mentioned your idea about the magazine." Maia shrugged.

"I only just thought of the magazine a few days ago," she said quietly. "I was always afraid no one would buy my fairytales, even if I'd put in all the effort of publishing them."

"I think you'd be surprised. You put _The_ _Twelve Dancing Princesses _or _Snow White_ or _Sleeping Beauty_ in a Wizard bookshop, you'd probably be amazed how many Muggle-born or half-blood wizards snap them up. You don't often see us in Muggle shops, if we can help it," Sirius smiled. Maia sighed and pulled out the selection of treats she had made late last night, and the piping-bag full of Madeleine batter, which she piped out into a tray and tucked into the oven.

"What time does Remus get off?" Maia asked.

"Six," Sirius said. He sighed, frowning thoughtfully at the unnamed owl perched in its cage on the table, fast asleep with its head under its wing.

"What is it?"

"Gladrag's is having a sale on robes," Sirius said slowly, passing a hand over his mouth thoughtfully. "I thought about getting some new ones for Remus." Maia glanced up; she had long suspected that Remus had had a hard life; all of his belongings were careworn but clearly loved and taken care of, but she couldn't think of an instance where she had ever seen him exchange money for anything, and he gave no hint of his job, if he had one.

Finally, Maia brought up the nerve to ask. "Sirius, where does Remus work?"

"He doesn't," Sirius said, with a heavy sigh, threading his fingers behind his neck, leaning back. He looked quite miserable.

"Why not?" Maia asked. "He's very smart; and he was a professor at Hogwarts."

"Remus was very lucky that Dumbledore accepted his application to teach," Sirius said, again very heavily. Maia frowned.

"What legislation is Remus working on?" she asked, staring at Sirius. He sighed.

"Well, we'd discussed telling you, just in case you stumble on him tonight," he finally said, dropping his hands. Fixing her with his pale eyes, he said baldly, "Remus is a werewolf."

Maia blinked. Then her eyes widened. "_Is_ he?" she blurted, warring between surprise and, well…_surprise_. Quiet, studious, very _kind_ Remus was… Was one of those 'monsters' the Ministry would have her believe all werewolves were: Uneducated, foul, dirty, bloodthirsty and brutal. She slowly set down the tray of freshly-baked Madeleines.

"He's working on trying to eradicate anti-werewolf legislation, isn't he," she said softly, gazing at Sirius. "The bills the Wizengamot passed that make it impossible for a werewolf to get a job? Denying Ministry funding for Wolfsbane Potion to be given to every werewolf in the week preceding the full-moon?" Slowly, Sirius nodded. She frowned, bit the inside of her cheek, and glanced at Sirius, mind whirring. "When…when you and Remus talk about him going 'underground'…do you mean Remus is going…going to see them, other werewolves?"

"Yes. And, quite literally, in some instances it does mean _underground_," Sirius said, his shoulders slumping.

"Is it…is it dangerous?" Maia asked quietly.

"Remus can handle himself. He's a gifted wizard, and had the benefit many didn't of gaining a full Hogwarts education," Sirius said. "Not every werewolf has been so lucky."

"Is Remus unique in that way, then?" she asked.

"I think some werewolves, if they had parents who weren't affected by it, were taught magic at home," Sirius said. "I'm no expert on the lifestyles of werewolves, just on Moony. But I know the precautions that had to be taken for Remus to attend school with us, and I know how difficult his life has been, without James…" He sighed, glanced at Maia, and poured the tea. Maia frowned thoughtfully.

"Without James financially supporting him," she finished for him, and Sirius glanced up, filling the last teacup and setting the teapot down. He nodded, without speaking. Maia glanced at the teacups he had set out; he had begun, Maia noticed, to set out three, even if Remus was out. One for him, one for her, and one for Kreacher. She sat down at the table, resting her cheek against her palm, and sighed. She gazed at Sirius. "At least you have each other back now. You take care of each other." Sirius smiled, passing her a teacup as she tipped the Madeleines out of the tray onto a plate.

"Kreacher!" Sirius called, glancing over his shoulder toward the boiler-room; with a crack, the house-elf appeared, smelling strongly of oil-paints. Maia realised she had forgotten to enquire in the apothecary about paints, and made a note of it in her diary, though she remembered what Ailith had said about the refilling charms.

"So…Remus is trying to get the support of other werewolves?" Maia said, glancing up at Sirius as she offered Kreacher the plate.

"That's right."

"Is he having any success?" Maia asked, remembering the conversation between Tonks and Remus, about someone in Amos Diggory's department at the Ministry whose daughter…was a werewolf.

"Some, I think," Sirius nodded. "If he gets enough support from other werewolves, when he's made liaison with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, or endorses the candidate to become liaison, things should go a lot smoother." Maia frowned.

"Magical _Creatures_," she said angrily, scowling at her tea. Sirius chuckled.

"You do remind me of Hermione," he said, chuckling fondly. Maia glanced up. "Have you received a reply yet?"

"No. And Remus says not to expect one before the Hogwarts exam-period is over," Maia said, and Sirius chuckled. She frowned and glanced at Sirius. "So…just how many werewolves are there in Britain?"

"Most wizards would say too many," Sirius said heavily. "Of course, there are some who've been bitten and attempted to keep it secret. Some don't survive the attack in the first place…" His eyes flickered, and Maia thought he studiously kept his gaze averted from her. "Usually children. And there are too many who live even harder lives than Remus; he was lucky, he was educated. A lot of werewolves don't have that luxury." Maia frowned again.

"Are there…werewolf children?" she asked tentatively. "Many of them?"

"More than Remus would like," Sirius sighed heavily, sipping his tea. "Of course, most werewolves don't reproduce… Who would want their child to be born with their condition? To face that pain every month."

"Is it very painful?" Maia asked softly.

"Unbearably," Sirius said huskily, eyes on the table. "I remember watching Remus transform in our fifth-year, we'd had no idea… But it isn't like when we were at school; werewolves can take Wolfsbane Potion, though it's ridiculously expensive. The potion allows the witch or wizard to keep their minds when they transform…to become tame…harmless."

"Does Remus take it?" Maia asked; Sirius nodded.

"I've paid for it," he said. Maia fiddled with the handle of her teacup.

"You know what I was joking about, the other day, about making donations to the Ministry so I can make connections and demand the indictment of free Death Eaters?" Sirius chuckled as he sipped his tea, and nodded. She frowned and nibbled on her lower-lip. "What if I was to donate specifically to funding that…that Wolfsbane programme, the one the Ministry _says_ it can't afford. To give all werewolves the Wolfsbane Potion." She added softly to herself, "Nothing's ever anywhere near as expensive when you buy it in bulk." She glanced up at Sirius, who was eyeing her shrewdly. She frowned. "Or what if I was just to donate money to an organisation that doesn't answer to the Ministry, and supplied the Wolfsbane that way?" Sirius chuckled warmly. As Maia poured tea for them, she glanced up at Sirius.

"You and Madam Rosmerta had a very long chat the other night," she observed. "Did she want to know about all your adventures?"

"Let's just say, she was shocked to discover the truth," Sirius said grimly, glancing at the Madeleine in his hand. "Even Remus thought me the traitor…back then." Maia glanced at Sirius, who was looking moody.

"And Madam Rosmerta runs the pub in Hogsmeade?" she said, and Sirius nodded.

"She does."

"What's Hogsmeade like?" Maia asked. Sirius glanced at her, head canted to one side.

"We can head up there, if you like, one day," he said. "You'd love Zonko's. And Honeydukes."

"What are they?"

"Zonko's is the joke-shop," Sirius grinned, and his younger self shone through. "A bit like Gambol & Jape's, but it's always flooded with kids from Hogwarts whenever they get a visit to the village. And Honeydukes is the sweet-shop." His eyes twinkled, as he said, "And there's a secret-passage that runs under Honeydukes right into the heart of Hogwarts."

"_Really_?" Maia grinned, sitting up straighter to perch at the edge of her seat. She lowered her teacup. "How many people know about it?"

"Harry, I know," Sirius said. "He used it to sneak into Hogsmeade while I was on the run, apparently he managed to get hold of the Marauder's Map from someone. Remus confiscated it, but the damage was done…" Maia knew Remus had confiscated the handmade and incredibly secret Marauder's Map from Harry due to his concern that Sirius was using the secret passages marked on it to get into Hogwarts—everyone at the time had believed Sirius was after Harry, when in actual fact he _had_ used the secret passages into the school to locate and kill Peter Pettigrew.

"You could…you could go all over Hogsmeade, if you knew how to get to Honeydukes…and if you knew how to Apparate, you could go anywhere, and no one would ever know…" she breathed. All thoughts of being held captive within Hogwarts fled, a slow grin hidden by her teacup.

"That you could," Sirius said, his expression jubilant as he watched her features carefully. Maia sat back, marvelling at her uncle's genius. She smiled at him. A magical map that showed the entire school, every secret passage, every room, every ghost and _person_.

"Does the Marauder's Map show house-elves?" she asked curiously.

"It should do," Sirius chuckled. "Took us a month to memorise all their names to put on it. And then another two weeks to figure out what charm would make the Map update itself with new names." Maia sipped her tea.

"I can't believe Remus was ever mischievous," she chuckled, and Sirius laughed, though something twinkled in his eyes. Perhaps he noted her almost complete lack of reaction to discovering Remus was a werewolf. What was she going to do, scream and throw things, burst into hysterical tears, run terrified from the house? Remus was everything the cretins at the Ministry implied he couldn't possibly be; exceptionally kind, modest, hard-working, and conscientious.

"He tried to be the good influence on us," Sirius said. "It worked, too, in our later years at school, we all focused more on…well, how to stay alive. But as we entered our teens, James and I were right little terrors." Maia had noticed that whenever Sirius talked about his time at school, it was always in reference to him and James, or them and Remus, but Peter Pettigrew was always an afterthought—as if he had been such during their time at school even as he was now.

"Sirius, how do children who've been bitten by a werewolf go to school?" she asked curiously. "I mean…primary-school."

"Most wizarding children are tutored at home before being sent off to Hogwarts," Sirius said. "Where possible, of course. It's just too much of a risk sometimes to have all our children around Muggles, while their magic is unstable, uncontrolled." Maia frowned.

"That little girl Tonks mentioned to Remus the other night…the one whose father works in Mr Diggory's department at the Ministry," she said slowly. "Who takes care of her, while her dad's at work? Her mother?"

"I couldn't say," Sirius shrugged. "Remus hasn't met with the man yet."

"The letter I posted today for Remus…it was for that man?" she asked; she hadn't glanced at the addressee, just delivered the letter; Sirius nodded. She frowned. "But, other werewolves are surely…literate, and things." She sighed heavily, sitting back in her chair. Kreacher was quiet, happily nibbling on the Fudge Flies she had bought him from the sweet shop and some Madeleines. "Are there witches and wizards who were bitten, but after they had children?" Sirius set down his teacup.

"I'll have to ask Remus," he said, staring at her.

"The Ministry should set up a childcare service to take care of their children on the full-moon at the very least," she said, scowling. "You said the transformation is very painful." Sirius nodded. "Werewolves with unaffected children should be able to leave their children somewhere safe while they're transforming—and for the day after the full-moon, too, so they can recover."

"I've changed my mind," Sirius said, looking a little pained as he stared at her. "I'm much too frightened of the things you and Hermione will get up to, to let you two meet."

"Too late," Maia smirked. "We're already in correspondence. Which is another thing—" Sirius threw back his head and _laughed_. He _laughed_ at her. "What?!"

"When we first met I thought you were shy and quiet," Sirius chuckled. "You're a bit opinionated, aren't you?"

"My friends at school always joked I'd be the next, _better_ Margaret Thatcher," Maia yawned.

"The first female Prime Minister, yes? The Iron Lady?" Sirius asked, and Maia nodded.

"Except, I'd be ultra-liberal," Maia sniffed. "_I_ wouldn't take away school milk."

"No, you plan to _give_ werewolves Wolfsbane Potion," Sirius chuckled. "You know, you could put all this in your _magazine_." Maia glanced at him, giving him a look before sipping her tea. "You could put in all that stuff you want to, about Muggles, but you could raise awareness about things in our world, too, like werewolves' rights, and the treatment of house-elves. You could write about the _Frabjous_ _Chizpurfles_ to your heart's content, too. You could show concepts for those cosmetics you want to try inventing. You could put in _recipes_."

Maia thought about that. And then dived for her diary, jotting Sirius' comments down. He smirked and chuckled, shaking his head as he sipped his tea.

"So what were you going to harangue me about?" Sirius chuckled.

"Owl-post," she said, setting down her pen. Sirius quirked an eyebrow. "It can't be very…well, foolproof. I'm sure there are spells and things to decipher coded letters, and making envelopes look like they haven't been opened. How many owls are intercepted every year? And what if it's an emergency and the owl can't find you? What if you never receive your post?" Sirius was grinning. "What? At this moment in the Muggle world, you can video-conference with someone halfway across the globe, you can send texts between phones, you can keep track of your friends in different countries on social-networking sights… And wizards use owls. I'm still struggling with the concept that wizards have only that medium of communication—Patronuses seem to be limited to the elite, those in the Order…" She shook her head. Sirius laughed again.

"You've been in this world ten days, you're already planning mass revolution."

"Not _revolution_," Maia corrected. "Revolution is such a nasty word. It brings to mind the Red Scare. Purge, modernise; _those_ are good words." Sirius chuckled.

"So, are you going to help me get ready for tomorrow?" Sirius asked.

"What's tomorrow?"

"The day after the full-moon," Sirius sighed heavily, glancing at her. "Remus won't be his best."

"What can I do to help?" Maia asked, and Sirius' lips twitched.

"Well, it seems you're an aficionado on baking," he chuckled, an understatement; "Back when we were at Hogwarts, we used to steal down to the kitchens, grab a load of the chocolatiest foods we could find, and force Moony to eat them all."

"Chocolate?"

"Haven't we mentioned that before?" Sirius asked, glancing at Maia. "Chocolate; it's a universal magical remedy. If you're ever set upon by a Dementor," a slight shiver crossed his face, "have a bit of chocolate after you've repelled it."

"You and Mrs Weasley gave me chocolate…" Maia mused, and Sirius nodded. She glanced at Sirius, thoughts going to her pâtisserie recipes featuring chocolate, to the most recent she had—"Oh!" She darted up and barrelled out of the room, vaulting upstairs; she heard Sirius's deep bark-like laugh reverberate in the stairwell, and she ran all the way up to the third-storey, dodging the grandfather-clock and skidding into her bedroom.

"Where is it?" she muttered to herself, seeking the pale-yellow novel she had just finished reading. Pulling out her wand, she thought hard, and said, "Accio_ The Help_."

The slim novel soared over from a stack of books; the others toppled, and as Maia grabbed _The Help _from midair she ran to stop the rest of the books toppling onto the floor; setting them back in a neat column, she again thought it might be worth starting to go through the library, if only so she could house her masses of books.

"What's this?" Sirius asked, when she dropped downstairs, setting the book on the table with her fat, heavy leather-bound, hand-watercoloured recipe-book, passed down through the generations.

"That is a novel that has just been turned into a film," Maia said, skimming through the pages. "I think Hermione Granger might enjoy reading it—well, _enjoy_ isn't the right word, but she'd be righteously indignant over the treatment of the black maids. And there's a chocolate-pie in the novel…" She didn't say more; Sirius had picked up the book, leaned back in his chair, and started reading. Maia smirked to herself and went through her recipes.

If Sirius had given her more advance notice, Maia could have produced some of the most decadent _pâtisserie_ in her treasure-trove of recipes, even gone to the sweetshop in Diagon Alley to have a bar of chocolate custom-made to put into some of the recipes. She admonished Sirius; "You could've mentioned all this earlier, so I could have had more time to prepare things," Maia admonished, and Sirius grinned.

Maia set aside her diary, closed her recipe-book, and washed the table, bringing out her enamel mixing-bowl, scales, whisk, and jars of flour, sugar, yeast, the ceramic dish of fresh eggs and cocoa, and while he became more and more engrossed in the novel, Maia baked up a storm. The recipe-book she had brought down had long ago been memorised; she had been taught since her very earliest childhood memories how to bake numerous different kinds of bread and pastry, the scent of freshly-baked bread pervasive in her memories, and Sirius had tasked her with feeding Remus so much chocolate he would explode.

So she whipped up cakes, her decadent take on _mousse aux chocolat_, a chocolate-hazelnut loaf, chocolate Madeleines, a chocolate-log, profiteroles filled with fresh chocolate crème pâtisserie, homemade puff-pastry for handfuls of little chocolate-ganache tarts with a surprise layer of raspberry curd, leaving enough pastry to make fresh croissants and _pain au chocolat_ in the morning; she made a batch of her famous (at school) chewy triple-chocolate cherry brownies, in which she added chopped, stoned cherries from her orchard that had been soaking in her homemade cherry liqueur; she also made a batch of iced chocolate cupcakes, double-chocolate chip muffins and cookies, with pistachios and chopped cherries for variation, and a batch of chocolate _macarons_ when she had found her jar of ground almonds.

If today was supposed to be her 'day off', she spent it in the kitchen, with her record-player brought down, playing her favourite Elvis songs, chatting with Sirius and baking, and getting high off the scent of cooking chocolate treats.

To break up the monotony of chocolate, and getting worried about the vast quantities of fresh fruit going to waste—this was prime jamming season she was coming into, with the extraordinary heat they had had the past month!—Maia prepared a large tart with a filling of cream-cheese sweetened with icing-sugar, lemon-juice and double-cream, topped with fresh sliced strawberries; the strawberries made her think of a Greek honey-pistachio cake she liked served with fresh yoghurt, so she made one of them, and the strawberries prompted her to blitz through the pantries before all the fruit went off.

While Kreacher sterilised the unused jars collected over the years, Maia set Sirius the task of preparing large bushels of raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, cherries, strawberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, plums, apricots and peaches. And with the refilling charm under her belt, Maia started making _jam_. She had decided half the fruit would be made into jams, half into _curds_, and she would make chutneys and piccalilli out of the vegetables, preparing preserved lemons, as well as pickled-onions.

Kreacher shaded the window, Sirius conjured fans that whorled gently, and with a big jug of homemade lemonade garnished with chunks of fruit and mint, the music on, it was a lovely, chilled-out, warm atmosphere.

Sirius marvelled at Maia's ability to knead pastry and dough, whisk egg-whites until they were meringues by hand, make piccalilli and curd and complicated processes for making homemade malt-loaf and knowing how to harvest honey. As she whisked a batch of vibrant raspberry curd over a _bain_ _marie_, Sirius, his lips stained from sampling the fruit, still holding onto _The Help_, sidled over to her, and reached out to feel her upper-arm.

"Strong as steel," he said, eyebrows flicking up in surprise. "Wouldn't have thought you'd be so strong to look at." Maia just shrugged slightly, sighing softly to herself. Her hair tied up in a handkerchief, wearing a floral cotton apron over her sundress, Sirius had conjured a folding fan to gently waft her with cool air while she stood over the range. But it was hot work, and he didn't understand…

"Diane was…_old_," Maia said quietly, licking her lips and tasting the saltiness of sweat; she wiped her face with her handkerchief, tucking it into the pocket of her apron, and sighed, before glancing at Sirius. "I loved taking care of her, having that privilege…but she was…aristocratic. She liked being taken care of, and _spoiled_."

Maia had had to do everything. The chickens, the beehives, the garden and the orchards…every year she would make the jams and chutneys, harvest the honey, and every day she had prepared fresh bread. And there had _always_ been cake. She hadn't minded; she had enjoyed indulging Diane, for she was mercurial and eccentric like the most dazzling fairytale characters. "And sometimes her mind slipped," she murmured, half to herself.

Had she lived even longer than her indeterminate age, Maia would have been concerned that Diane had showed signs of dementia. Little things, but once she had woken to get the bread on and prepare breakfast, before heading off to college, and noticed that Diane wasn't in her room. Maia had found her, half-frozen, several miles away from the Hobbit-hole, just gazing over the dewy meadows in the dawn, dressed in nothing but her nightie. She would spout Shakespeare or Wordsworth in the middle of a conversation about knitting, spoke of astrology as a salutation, quoted Virgil and hoarded little trinkets like a magpie, with mercurial emotions ranging from vitriol at her secrets being discovered, and weeping, forgetting things. It had fallen to Maia to comfort her, and to remember, whenever Diane forgot. Puddings, sweets and pâtisserie were her comfort, and it was Maia's delight to provide them for her, indulging her naughtiness when the cakes disappeared while she was at her lessons.

Baking fresh bread every day was an intensely physical practice, as was cooking everything by hand—no electrical appliances in the Hobbit-hole—and perhaps even more physically demanding was gardening.

It didn't take long to make the jam and curds; Maia had to stop Sirius sticking his finger into the wide, shallow pan, trying to get at the fragrant jams. Mrs Weasley teaching her different spells to help in the kitchen, especially _Scourgify_, ensured Maia didn't have to do _any_ washing up. The dresser and pantries featured the cooling patisserie treats Maia had cooked up, and the large kitchen table was spread with bushels of prepared fruit on one side, Maia's enamel bowl (used to measure out sugar) and on the other side, sterilised jars of untold shapes and sizes—not one of them gathered from a Muggle shop; they had been used and reused for preserves for _years_, much more elegant and pretty than the usual jam-jars—some of them filled with fresh jam, the ceramic dish of fresh eggs lending its contents to the individual jars of specific fruit curds Maia prepared over a _bain_ _marie_.

Preparing the vegetables for piccalilli and different chutneys, the large, shallow pan was put back on the stove after the last of the blackcurrant jam had been jarred, and Maia put together a ratatouille for an early tea. When Remus appeared, looking incredibly tired and wan, Maia cracked four eggs into the ratatouille and let them cook, before doling out four platefuls with a chunk of fresh, crusty bread. Pudding consisted of the fresh strawberry tart, and a glass of Butterbeer each. Maia sent Remus off for a nap with a boozy chocolate-cherry brownie, and she put away the things she had made for Remus to enjoy tomorrow inside battered old, painted enamel cake-tins.

When other Order members started to arrive, she brought out more fresh fruit, other treats she had made earlier in the week, and pitchers filled with drinks, and met two new recruits: Florean Fortescue, and a rather formidable-looking woman in a pointed witch's hat topped with a stuffed _vulture_.

"Augusta Longbottom," she said, offering her hand imperiously to Maia. "And you are Godfrey's granddaughter."

Maia stared. Godfrey? She glanced at Sirius. "Am I?" she murmured in a low voice. She couldn't decide whether she _wanted_ to be Godfrey's granddaughter. Something about this imperious woman made her wary.

"It's _unmistakable_!" Mrs Longbottom said, in her forceful voice. "Exceptional wizard, Godfrey de Lusignan. I loved your grandfather; and I shall love you." Maia didn't know what to say, so she nodded. She glanced at Sirius, whose eyes were twinkling; he was two-thirds of the way through _The Help_ already, and had been quite put out when Mrs Weasley had arrived with Mrs Longbottom, Ailith escorting Florean Fortescue.

"So, where do you go to school, child?" Mrs Longbottom asked.

"I just finished exams at a Muggle sixth-form college," Maia said.

"Merlin, that must have been dreadfully dull!" Mrs Longbottom scowled. "Are you a squib?"

"No. But I was raised by one," Maia said, and Mrs Longbottom's eyebrows rose.

"_Oh_. Diane," she nodded, and Maia smiled.

"Did you know my great-aunt?"

"Not well; she was always on the periphery; raised Godfrey, too," Mrs Longbottom said, and Maia stared.

"She did?" She had known her great-aunt was ancient, and that there were a few generations between them…but her aunt had raised Maia's _grandfather_, too?

"Yes. It's very hard to have a squib in the family," Mrs Longbottom declared. "Always worrying that your child won't have it as easy as you did… For the longest time I was afraid my grandson was non-magical."

"How is Neville doing?" Remus asked quietly, walking over from Sturgis and Lothaire.

"Remus! Remus Lupin!" Mrs Longbottom crowed. "How very good to see you. I believe my grandson never did half so well at school as when you were teaching him."

"Neville's a very hard-worker," Remus said. "I was always quite proud of his persistence."

"It's a shame he doesn't have his father's talent," Mrs Longbottom sighed.

"Oh, Neville has talent enough," Remus smiled kindly. "It was always just a matter of confidence. I had very few conversations with Professor Sprout where Neville's name didn't crop up." Maia glanced at Mrs Longbottom, remembering how Remus had asked her to write a post-script in her letter to Hermione, to tell Neville he could do anything he set his mind to. Maia glanced at Mrs Longbottom.

"You weren't in the original Order?" she asked.

"No, indeed I was not," Mrs Longbottom said, and she seemed to puff up with pride as she said, "My son and daughter-in-law were. Exceptionally talented, very popular Aurors."

"Aurors? Like Tonks, Kingsley and Mad-Eye?" Maia asked, and Mrs Longbottom glanced around when Maia gestured to the three chatting about Rufus Scrimgeour, a popular topic between the Aurors who had to be careful around their head of office.

"This is the _real_ Mad-Eye, I presume," Mrs Longbottom said, and her lips had gone white as she seemed to tremble with rage.

"It is," said Sirius, appearing beside Maia. Maia glanced from Mrs Longbottom to Mad-Eye, wondering what was going on; she knew that Mad-Eye had been attacked, and Barty Crouch Jr. had posed as him for nine months…what made Mrs Longbottom shake with rage like that?

"Sirius Black!" Mrs Longbottom exclaimed, her eyebrows rising. "Tell me it's true."

"It is," Sirius said, with a saddened smile.

"Frank never believed it possible, never!" Mrs Longbottom declared, and Maia thought she was talking about believing Sirius would ever betray the Potters. "Always spoke very highly of you."

"Frank was a great man," Sirius said, offering Mrs Longbottom a glass of red wine. "We got each other out of quite a few scrapes."

"No doubt, no doubt," Mrs Longbottom said, and she seemed to chuckle slightly.

"Oh," Sirius grimaced guiltily. "I'm afraid I should apologise."

"For what?"

"Your grandson was banned from attending Hogsmeade visits, and it was my fault," Sirius said, wincing guiltily again as Mrs Longbottom's shoulders straightened. "I convinced a part-Kneazle cat to steal the passwords he had written down on a piece of paper, so I could access Gryffindor Tower and kill Pettigrew."

"_Ah_," Mrs Longbottom said, nodding slowly.

"So I just wanted to apologise for getting your grandson in trouble," Sirius winced guiltily again. "I'll have to ask Dumbledore to repeal Neville's ban… I know what it's like to be cooped up in the same place for months on end." Mrs Longbottom patted Sirius on the shoulder, sipped her wine, and made her way over to Mad-Eye, with whom she fell into what looked like a very serious conversation.

"She seems…" Maia frowned, uncertain what to say. "Intense."

"What's Neville Longbottom like?" Sirius asked curiously.

"Mrs Longbottom's memory of her son overshadows her love for her grandson," Remus said quietly. "But Neville was always quiet and kept to himself… I've never met anyone quite so dignified… And he was persistent. He never gave up trying to get through the course-load, no matter how desperately he wanted to. I offered him one-to-one lessons while I was at Hogwarts; he made a lot of progress that way… I think Augusta's expectations of him make him feel he comes up a bit short." He sighed, glancing at Mrs Longbottom.

"Well, we're lucky to have Augusta on our side, at any rate," Sirius said, sipping his Butterbeer. "She's a phenomenal witch." When everyone had gathered—even Professor Dumbledore, who usually showed up only when new members were being inducted—Maia picked up her glass of garnished lemonade, her diary and a slice of sticky, fragrant ginger cake, about to make her way out of the room to find somewhere cool and dark to lie down after the immense effort she had put in, when Professor Dumbledore called her back.

"Just a moment, Maia," he said, smiling. "You can sit in on this part, as it will affect you."

"Oh…okay," Maia said, highly surprised; she stepped beside Sirius, leaning against the dresser. Glancing at Sirius, she wondered what they were going to talk about.

"Hogwarts will be breaking up for the summer in a week's time," Professor Dumbledore said, glancing at Sirius, Remus and Maia. His eyes twinkled subtly as he saw Kreacher, in a fresh pillowcase with his ear-hair fluffy and soft. "Due to the threat posed to Cedric Diggory's life, after the snake-attack and with Pettigrew and Voldemort still on the loose, Amos has inquired as to whether his son can live here during the summer."

"Of course," Sirius said, without hesitation.

"And Arthur and Molly will talk to the twins, Ronald and Ginevra about coming to stay," Professor Dumbledore said, eyes still twinkling.

"That's probably best," Sirius nodded. "Since Pettigrew knows where you live…"

"_Exactly_," Mrs Weasley said, looking anxious.

"What about, um…Hermione Granger?" Maia asked, glancing at Sirius. "She's best-friends with Ron and Harry, isn't she? She was there the night Pettigrew's true identity was uncovered."

"She was," Sirius nodded. "We've been thinking about inviting her to stay. Not the whole summer, obviously, she has her parents, I'm sure they're anticipating her return."

"And they do tend to go on holiday with Hermione, whenever they can," Mrs Weasley said. "I'm sure they've discussed it, but I'll make sure Ron sends Hermione an owl, to invite her."

"Why don't you bring Neville?" Sirius said suddenly, glancing over at Mrs Longbottom.

"While you're working with the Order, he can spend time with kids his own age," Remus suggested.

"That will be good for him," Mrs Longbottom frowned. "He has so few friends; he spends his summers alone, in his garden."

"Well, bring him over," Sirius said enthusiastically.

"Are you sure, Sirius?" Mrs Weasley asked. "With even just us it's already another six. Cedric and Neville, and Hermione, too?"

"The more the merrier," Sirius said heartily, grinning. "Anyway, now that Herr Maia has stopped whipping my hide raw to get this house cleaned—"

"Excuse me!"

"—we've got more than enough of the bedrooms sorted out. And we need Hermione here anyway, to go through the library," Sirius continued, patting Maia's head; she gave him a deadpan look.

"Anyway, um, Ginny could share with me," Maia said, glancing at Mrs Weasley; she had memorised all the Weasley children's names. "There are a few twin rooms that the twins could share, and maybe Cedric and Neville could. That way, if anyone else in the Order needed a place to crash for the night, there'd be spare beds available. The sofas in the drawing-room don't exactly seem fit for people to sleep on."

"When is Cedric coming?" Remus asked Mr Diggory.

"The day he gets back from Hogwarts," Mr Diggory said. "It's convenient, with me and his mum both working in London. And with all the protection on this place, he'll be safe."

"I can bring Neville the same day, too," Mrs Longbottom said.

"I'll try and get things organised as much as possible," Mrs Weasley said, "before Hogwarts breaks, but give us a few days at the Burrow before you expect us."

"Now that that's settled," Professor Dumbledore smiled, "Maia, Sirius informs me you have several ideas regarding werewolves." Maia blinked, then flushed, as everyone turned to look at her.

"Oh. Those. Well," she blushed. "I thought about…giving a financial donation to an organisation that supports werewolf rights, to cover the costs of supplying Wolfsbane Potion free to werewolves, since the Ministry can't 'afford' it," she added, using air-quotes with a slight roll of her eyes; many peoples' lips twitched. "And I wondered whether there's a childcare service available to werewolves who might have unaffected children, you know, where they know their children can be safe on the night of the full-moon, and the day after, so they can recuperate after the transformation."

"And you mentioned primary-school," Sirius intoned, and Maia blushed again as all eyes remained on her.

"Well, we were really just talking, but…I was wondering how children affected by the bite are tutored," Maia said. "Whether there's a school for werewolves too young to attend Hogwarts? They could be provided with Wolfbane Potion at school, so that's a burden off the parents…"

Remus' eyes, despite his wan face, were twinkling as he gazed at her. She blushed shyly, she _had_ been thinking a lot about werewolves, what she had read about them in her Defence Against the Dark Arts books, what she knew of Remus himself, thinking about the little girl Tonks had hinted was affected by lycanthropy, wondering who took care of her while her father was at work, how she could fit in at a Muggle school if she was always very ill.

Several hours later, the meeting broke up, and Maia woke up in her armchair with a start, hearing the laughter and talking echoing up from the hall. When she dropped downstairs, rubbing her eyes, her arms screaming in protest from kneading, whisking, mixing, lifting and stirring all day, she became aware that amongst the familiar faces, two were missing. Remus hadn't made a show of disappearing before sunset; Sirius had gone with him, disguised as Padfoot, more to keep his oldest friend company than to keep him in check, a return to tradition.

Mrs Longbottom bid her goodbye rather imperiously, saying she hoped she would get along with Neville and didn't mind the imposition of having all these house-guests: Mr Diggory shook Maia's hand, and Mrs Weasley assured Maia that she needn't be put out of her bedroom when she brought her children, that Ginny was used to sharing a bedroom with Hermione during the summer-holidays, and wouldn't mind continuing the tradition here. Maia handed Mr Weasley a hardback book just before he and Mrs Weasley slipped out of the house. _Masters of the Post: The Authorized History of the Royal Mail_.

"I used it as a reference in one of my Early-Modern Britain essays on news and communications," Maia said, and Mr Weasley's eyes illuminated. "It's a bit academic, but you might appreciate the detail."

"Ooh, thank you!" Mr Weasley said eagerly, his face glowing as he reached for the book stuffed with photographs, pictures, maps and diagrams. Mrs Weasley gave the book a faintly disapproving look, but she smiled at Maia. His 'eccentricities', as wizards saw them, probably were one of the reasons Mrs Weasley loved her husband so much.

Maia wondered whether Sirius had asked her to, but Ailith remained at Number Twelve, with Jack and the other boys from the _Frabjous_ _Chizpurfles_. Bill had taken away duplications of Maia's recipes for several different things; alongside Tonks, he was covertly letting Maia teach him how to cook. And he had also asked whether Maia had any books on learning French.

"Diane made workbooks to help teach me languages, and maths and things like that," Maia said, "I could make a duplicate of the French one, and clean it up…if you'd like."

"Thanks, Maia," he grinned, and strode out of the house after giving her a one-armed hug.

"You know, you really should start charging if you're going to lend out your library," Ailith said, glancing up from the parchment she was working on.

"Don't worry; I wrote it down that I lent the book out to Mr Weasley," Maia said, waving her diary.

"Ah, the diary," Ailith smiled.

"I thought I'd work from it," Maia sighed, stretching luxuriously before climbing into a chair at the kitchen-table, having brought down a few feather cushions embroidered beautifully.

"How are your lessons going?" Ailith asked. "Sirius mentioned he's been teaching you."

"They're going," Maia nodded. "A few hours every day. We're working through the Charms and Transfiguration texts. Remus is doing Defence with me. And I'm working through the Potions textbook. It's just cooking, really."

"I hope you don't taste-test," Jack said, glancing up and smirking; he and the boys were scribbling in a large leather-bound workbook, while Vittorio sat off to the side with his violin. Ailith caught her eye.

"If it _looks_ like Butterbeer, it _must_ be Butterbeer," she said.

"That was once!" Jack blurted, glancing at Ailith. "And _you_ told me to do it."

"Didn't."

"Did."

"Where's Tonks?" Maia asked curiously; she couldn't remember seeing her earlier.

"She's having dinner at her parents' house," Ailith said. "She had a long day in the Auror Office. I think she's trying to convince her mum and dad to get involved with the Order. Andromeda Tonks is _scary_ when she wants to be."

"Really?" Maia asked curiously. Ailith nodded.

"According to Tonks, her mum was a duelling champion," Ailith said, smiling. "She says she supposes that's the only reason Bellatrix Lestrange never went after her during the War."

"Bellatrix…Sirius' other cousin?" Maia asked, remembering the name Sirius had erased from a silver plaque on one of third-storey bedrooms near her own. "Aren't they sisters? Sirius told me Bellatrix was in Azkaban."

"She is. But she was only imprisoned after You-Know-Who fell," Ailith said. "She went in with a few other Death Eaters, after torturing an Auror and his wife to insanity." Maia exhaled a stunned breath. Ailith gave her an understanding look. "It's no wonder Sirius hated this place." She glanced around the kitchen, unrecognisable from when Maia had first arrived; there was _stuff_ everywhere. Every day, Maia had been bringing more and more things out of her trunks, slowly but surely moving in; most of the things littered around the kitchen were dedicated to cooking, some were her magic schoolbooks; others were Sirius' very handsome wood record-player and stacks of records, as well as Maia's black DVD-cases, and stacks of novels, and some of the new books Maia had bought in _Flourish and Blotts_ and was making her way through.

"It doesn't look like the Number Twelve I arrived at last week," Maia said. "It doesn't even feel like it anymore."

"No. You and Sirius did an amazing job of cleaning and redecorating it," Ailith smiled. "What are you going to do for the rest of the summer?"

"Work on my fairytales, I suppose," Maia said. "And continue having my lessons."

"Are you trying to catch up, before you go to Hogwarts?" Ailith asked. Maia nodded.

"I don't relish the idea of being the only teenager in my class," she sighed.

"Well, don't try to do too many things at once; your brain will explode," Ailith said, and Maia chuckled. "Although, you managed A-Levels before you turned sixteen. My brothers both went to pieces during their exams."

"Are they Muggles?"

"Yes. Charles has just finished at Oxford, and Quentin just sat his A-Levels," Ailith said.

"What subjects did he take?" Maia asked interestedly.

"Physics, Maths, Further-Maths and Art," Ailith said.

"Does he want to be an architect?" Maia asked, and Ailith chuckled, nodding. For a little while, while Ailith worked and Maia did some more paintings, trying out several other charms from the book on Wizard art she had bought, they talked about Ailith's Muggle toff brothers, which universities her youngest brother had applied for through UCAS, and they talked about the extortionately-swollen costs of university since the government put through new legislation, and the problems of student loans—"everyone's getting loans, but you don't have to pay them back until you're earning a specific amount, and with the economy, very few grads are getting jobs, so it's free money! What the government should do is _lower_ the cost of university fees, and squash a three-year course into eighteen months. I have a friend at university at the moment, she started in late-September, and she was finished by the Easter holidays! Barely six months, and they're going to start charging nine-_thousand_ pounds?"

"I know. It's ridiculous," Ailith sighed.

"Do you want to know my theories on how this will affect society?" Maia asked, and Ailith chuckled.

"Tell me."

"Well, the rising costs of university won't affect the very rich, so they'll remain the highest tier of society. And the chavs and students with parents on the dole will get all of the grants, so it won't cost them a penny," Maia said, "but it'll be the middle-class who'll suffer. They won't get the funding, the grants, and _they'll_ turn into the new lower-class because they won't be able to afford the costs of going to university, unless they start out their adult lives with a whole load of debt… What's it like for witches and wizards, coming out of Hogwarts?"

"Well, my year at Hogwarts, all but two of our House had jobs lined up before we finished in June," Ailith said, looking thoughtful. "And the others got jobs, but they moved around and stuck with things to get promoted, until they were where they wanted to be. I'm not counting Jack, of course."

"Hey!" Jack pouted.

"Your life's aim was to inherit your uncle's fortune, leave your mum and sister destitute, have six wives and a hundred illegitimate children, and die alone in a drunken binge leaving everything to a pet Tarsier," Ailith said, glancing at Jack, who shrugged.

"Yes, well, I was young and naïve," Jack sighed. "I can do better than only a hundred illegitimate children!" Maia laughed, and Ailith rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she turned back to her work.

"So, most people, when they leave Hogwarts, they start working right away?"

"Yes. Of course, with the old families, you've still got people like…I don't know, like Bertie Wooster. They don't need to work, so they just have a lot of fun," Ailith said. "Most keep involved in politics and things, but the Wizarding world is still old-fashioned. If you're very clever, or very talented, you can start out from Hogwarts with the prospect of an exceptional career. If you're rich, you'll most likely stay rich. Craftsmanship skills are kept within the family. But either way, if you want something, you have to work for it. Bill and Charlie Weasley were both very hard-working at school, so they got job-opportunities they deserved, but they went after them. And, sometimes, it does help who you know."

"Good thing I've come to live here, then," Maia smiled. "I dine with the heads of two Ministry departments; go drinking with Aurors and have ice-cream with journalists for the _Daily Prophet_…" Ailith laughed.

"So, what are you working on?" she asked, a few moments later; she had set aside her work, and despite Maia still painting, she had brought out the _Scrabble_ board, the popcorn and was mulling some cider.

"I can't decide whether to have Red Riding Hood a little girl…or a teenager," Maia said, showing Ailith the studies she had made of a little girl with flushed cheeks, and a brunette teenager with rose-coloured lips and curling hair that fell into her eyes rather roguishly. The little girl swung a basket, toeing a clump of frilly mushrooms and wildflowers in a sun-dappled wood, a robin chirping from the gnarled tree-trunk she had painted with a large knot in it, owl-eyes glinting within; the teenaged Red Riding Hood held a glowing lantern, illuminating her face from below, wolves' eyes glinting in the darkness of the wood surrounding her, the red of her cloak a deep cherry. She glanced up at Ailith. "Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf?"

Ailith chuckled. "You could actually go in whichever direction you liked," she said thoughtfully. "You could explore the darker adolescent version. Go the way of that recent film."

"Oh, _Red Riding Hood_," Maia nodded. "I went to see it with my friends Jess and Zita; they went for Shiloh Fernandes, I went for Bill Nighy." Ailith chuckled.

"Or, you could do two versions," she said, smiling.

"Saucy fairytales for teens?" Maia chuckled. Ailith grinned. "Did you know originally Sleeping Beauty was raped? She awoke giving birth; and Rapunzel was cast out of the tower because the Prince had got her pregnant… Flynn Rider never would've done _that_."

"Ah, _Tangled_," Ailith smiled. "I took my youngest cousin to see it."

"I liked it—visually, more than anything," Maia smiled. "I've got it, actually, upstairs, and _Red Riding Hood_… It was a gift. I could do with re-watching a lot of the old _Disney_ films. I set out with this project wanting to make the female characters as un-_Disney_-looking as possible."

"A redhead Rapunzel."

"And a wheat-blonde Beauty."

"Magic gives the Frog Prince a new spin," Ailith chuckled. "I always loved that one. And the Princess and the Pea."

"The Gingerbread Man!" Maia laughed. "I'm sure you could Charm a gingerbread-man!" Ailith laughed.

"Which others have you done paintings for?"

"Um…Snow White, Tom Thumb, Hansel and Gretel, the Snow Queen, Thumbelina… I wanted to do Goldilocks and the Tree Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk and the Ugly Duckling," Maia said thoughtfully, writing them down on a fresh page of her journal.

"Have you written any stories for the other fairytales?" Ailith asked.

"Not really," Maia said, shrugging delicately. "I've been too focused on the paintings."

"Well, I picked this up for you," Ailith said, drawing something out of a pocket of her jacket: it was a pamphlet made of the same thick parchment the ones she had picked up from Madame Primpernelle's and the sweetshop were made of. "One of the literary correspondents at the _Prophet_ has a lot of connections with publishers, and there's a very small printer in Diagon Alley who will hand-make books to your requirements. For a fee, of course, but you'd get all of the profits. No one would interfere with the design or anything."

"_That_ would be cool!" Maia grinned, taking the leaflet. "You asked your colleague about publishers?"

"We have desks near each other in the office," Ailith smiled. "Anyway, he liked your idea. Said if I could get hold of an example of your watercolours, he could do a small piece on your stories as being ones to watch out for."

"Really?" Maia beamed, a little embarrassed but very pleased.

"Absolutely. I don't even have children, but I want to buy up all of your stories for them!" Ailith chuckled softly, her gentle eyes warm. Maia glanced at the leaflet again.

"I'll have to have a look into this," she said thoughtfully. Her fairytale watercolours had been an unreachable wish, a sort of hoped-for, untouchable desire that would really never come to anything because she didn't know where to start. As Ailith had said, it was all about who one knew.

When Ailith and the boys departed, sometime later that evening, Maia traipsed upstairs to her room, sending Kreacher off to bed, and sat in her armchair, thinking about her fairytales; she went through the leaflet Ailith had given her, and, making a list of fairytales in a neat column, she ticked off the ones she had done illustrations for, which fairytales she needed to do _more_ paintings for, and pulled out fresh watercolour paper, painting studies for various new characters from different tales. She didn't last long; an hour later she had several pages of her diary filled with studies of different, eccentric, beautiful characters, costume ideas, hairstyles and eye-colours, proposed settings and notes on cuisine she could slip into the paintings.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: So, please review!


	12. Chapter 12

**A.N.**: I am officially obsessed with the Eleventh Doctor. I will marry Matt Smith. You are all invited. My dress will be TARDIS-blue, and he'll be wearing a bowtie. Bowties are cool.

I'm really loving the idea of a wizard Woodstock. Woodstock meets _Boat That Rocked_ meets Bestival…

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_12_

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><p>Two days since Remus' transformation, Sirius was <em>grumpy<em>. The cleaning having been taken over by Kreacher, who had the upper-storeys _sparkling_, this only served to increase Sirius' awareness that, while the numerous and ever-increasing members of the Order came and went at their leisure, stopping by to give reports, have a cup of tea and a cake (there were always fresh treats cooling in the kitchen) and listen in on meetings, all he seemed to think he could do to help was nothing but play _host_ at Headquarters.

His chief joys became the daily crossword in the _Prophet_; Maia's frequent meals and surprises of different fresh treats; his records, and Ailith. Every time she showed up, he would gain new life, his sullenness giving way to ready grins, Maia noticing more and more how his eyes would light up at the sight of her, and how any mention of her made him tense slightly, as if listening hard.

It wasn't helped that Sirius couldn't get out; the only time he went outside of Grimmauld Place was to escort Maia to and from Diagon Alley or the Hobbit-hole; Maia was dead-on in thinking Sirius snuck off to Knocturn Alley to pick up news that the Order wouldn't hear in Diagon Alley or the Three Broomsticks. But with the redecorating nearly complete in a good number of the spare bedrooms (magic made things so much easier), Maia now _needed_ to go to Diagon Alley every other day, if that, and usually only to buy fresh fish or meat, so Sirius' opportunities to do more for the Order than he felt he was doing were increasingly limited.

Maia's magic lessons continued, and they were becoming difficult enough to keep them both engrossed, especially Potions and Transfiguration, which both required a lot of concentration and vigilance—she had to remind herself constantly not to taste-test. Her Charms lessons were fun; having devoured the contents of her mother's old, out-of-date schoolbooks years ago, and being taught spells as she needed them around the house, in the kitchen and tending her garden, she was flying through the _Standard Book of Spells_. By the end of the second week, she had gone through the first two books; she put this down to one-to-one tutoring with Sirius, and not having the pressure of formal lessons.

Recovered a little from his transformation, thanks to the copious amounts of chocolate treats Maia had baked up, the concern of his best-friend and the ability to climb into a warm bed made up with freshly-laundered bedding after a long, soothing bath at the end of it, it was nevertheless down to Sirius to teach Maia defensive magic the few days either side of the full-moon. Remus began spending increasing amounts of time out of the house, and he came back to the house very tired each evening.

It was bizarre to think she had been at Grimmauld Place only two weeks; being thrown into the centre of everything, she had formed strong bonds quickly. But it was telling on Sirius, being cooped up while he thought everyone else was being useful, but Maia loved it. She loved this new world she had hurled herself into, and she loved living at the Headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, if only because of the incredibly eccentric people she met there. She loved getting to know Sirius, whom she was beginning to think was a slight case of arrested-development due to his incarceration, but was sincere and incredibly funny and _very_ bright. He often credited himself with her own creativity and intelligence.

She was, according to Sirius, the only blood-relative he'd ever actually adored. Andromeda had come close, he had said, due to her marrying a Muggle-born and thus binning tradition; Tonks, they were both getting to know, and it was a regular mealtime show that Tonks changed her appearance at will, making the most gruesome and grotesque facial features appear, turning herself into tiny doddering little aunties, tall and willowy blondes, or Maia's twin when the mood struck her to try and confuse the others. A fledgling Auror, or "baby Aury" as Maia had teasingly dubbed her, Tonks had been taken under the wing of Moody at the Auror Office, to which he had returned, coming out of his retirement. Tonks spent increasing amounts of time at Number Twelve outside of Order meetings, and it wasn't unusual for her to sink, giggling, into a heap, half-drenched with spilt Butterbeer, as they bantered, chatting about everything Maia could think of, teasing Sirius the more comfortable they felt around him. Sirius treated Tonks as he would a younger-sister he got on well with, Maia, almost like a daughter; but mostly, as a _friend_.Definitely someone he cared about and wanted to take care of; he called her "_Niecey_" when he was being affectionate.

While Sirius was getting to know Maia, he was also, Maia had noticed, re-discovering the wizard he had once been, before Azkaban; he was bringing that wizard back, but combined with the wizard who had been imprisoned for twelve years, and the wizard who had spent two years on the run, hovering in the periphery ready to help his godson _at any cost_. The result was a very intelligent man who loved music and the evidence of his adolescence in old magazines, the Muggle film-reels, etcetera, was restless and very brave, energetic but caged, and if he got in a mood, it wasn't unusual to hear music blasting from the bedroom he had staked a claim on; his childhood bedroom had been left, cleaned, as a shrine. Mostly because they couldn't get his posters and photographs off the wall.

The photographs and paintings of Maia's that Sirius had particularly liked and set aside, had all been duplicated, beautifully mounted and framed, decorating the walls of many of the spare-bedrooms, alongside trinkets they had discovered around the house. Ailith and Maia both took a lot of photographs whenever people remained at Number Twelve for dinner, or afternoon-tea as it had occurred at the weekend. Ailith came to Number Twelve to borrow use of the dark-room Sirius had charmed for Maia, and several times Maia had gone up to bed leaving Sirius and Ailith talking cosily in the warm amber light of the kitchen, sipping drinks and going through the _Evening Prophet_ crossword.

Sirius had declared Saturdays were Days Off, but Maia was in the habit of getting up early anyway, due to the fact that several members of the Order would stop by before work, especially if they had been "on duty", and she liked seeing new faces as much as Sirius did. Everyone in the Order seemed to realise that Maia loved to learn, to explore and, sometimes, to criticise, but increasingly everyone who stopped by at meetings brought a book they thought she might take an interest in, or a new magazine, or showed her curious Wizarding artefacts and equipment. If an obscure charm was mentioned, they would tell her the incantation and the wand-movement, so she could study it. Every time Florean Fortescue came to a meeting, he would bring a tub of his handmade ice-cream; Madam Rosmerta frequently brought bottles of elf-made wine, casks of mead and a selection of liquors Maia had never heard of. Every time Mad-Eye arrived, he would drill Maia on what she had learned with Sirius, and the first time he had realised she was learning magic from Sirius at home, had lectured her on elementary wand-safety for an hour. Sirius had smirked, and asked why she hadn't been taking notes.

"What do you want to do today?" Maia asked, glancing up at Sirius, who was tucking into his breakfast with the enthusiasm he had not lost since Maia had begun feeding him twelve meals a day. A grunt was his response; Remus' quill was scratching away at parchment, working diligently on a reply to one of several letters he had received late last night, making notes on another piece of parchment and checking something in a book and on a long scroll.

"We could go to the Hobbit-hole," Maia suggested, glancing at Sirius. She fiddled with her paintbrush (her breakfast having long-since been finished, due to being up an hour earlier than Sirius to bake some bread, and a batch of chocolate _macarons_) and glanced down at her new illustrations; she had done studies for _The Princess and the Pea_, the _Gingerbread Man_, and _Hansel and Gretel_. Glancing at the Gingerbread Man, and the incredible sweet-encrusted gingerbread-house from _Hansel and Gretel_, based on the sweetshop in Diagon Alley, she glanced up at Sirius. "Or we could go to Hogsmeade. You mentioned we could go and visit Zonko's and Honeydukes." Sirius sighed, looking glum. "Or we could go and see Madam Rosmerta," Maia suggested coaxingly; Madam Rosmerta _always_ flirted with Sirius whenever she came over to Number Twelve. Another grunt, his shoulders falling. "We can go to Diagon Alley and look in Gladrag's," she tried again. Sirius sighed heavily, looking glum.

She understood Sirius' bitterness, but didn't like it when he became moody and introverted like this; usually he got through his periods of sullenness by himself, but it made for a slightly tense atmosphere. Maia set her paintbrush down, went to go and refill the teapot, and jumped when several owls fluttered down to the kitchen window.

"Post!" she said delightedly; every morning an extra rasher of bacon was fried up and cut into little slivers, for any owl that might come and deliver letters. Usually they were for Remus, and the owl that delivered the _Prophet_ flew off as soon as the three Knuts were tucked safely in its little leg-pouch. But there were three owls: a Barn Owl bearing the _Prophet_; a Whiskered Screech bearing a letter for Remus; and a tiny little Elf Owl, bearing a letter…_for Maia_.

She paid the delivery-owl, offered the Whiskered Screech the dishes of water and bacon after relieving it of its letter, and took her own letter from the tiny little owl.

"Oh, it's Pig!" Sirius said, glancing over as the little owl twittered excitably, zooming around Maia's head as she wandered over to the table, handing Sirius the _Prophet_, Remus his letter, and sat down to open her own envelope, which was fat and heavy and neatly addressed in dark navy ink.

Just by her handwriting Maia could tell Hermione Granger was sensible. The letter was long, with tiny handwriting, and included a folded leaflet; Maia picked up the leaflet and examined the front. It said;

**Society for the Promotion**

**of Elfish Welfare**

_Stop the Outrageous Abuse_

_of our Fellow Magical Creatures_

_and Campaign for a Change_

_in Their Legal Status_

The letter read:

_5 June, 2012_

_Dear Maia,_

_Thank you for your letter!_

_We were all ('we' meaning myself, Ron and Harry) very surprised to hear Snuffles has a niece, however, we're all very glad that at least Snuffles has somewhere to live, and someone to watch out for him in his situation. And if Remus Lupin is with you also, we're very glad to hear from him; we haven't seen him since last June, when he resigned his teaching-post here at Hogwarts. He's still the best Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher we've ever had (Moody being an imposter and downright scary even when we thought he was genuine!) and Neville asked me to pass on a message to Professor Lupin through you, that he misses Professor Lupin's kindness and encouragement, and thinks he seriously needs more one-to-one tutoring, though we don't actually have a Defence exam this year._

_Please tell Professor Lupin that I've been trying to help coach Neville through some of the more difficult exams myself, but he's sorely missed here, by more than just us!_

_I can't believe you've never been part of the Wizarding world before! I've never heard of a witch going to a Muggle secondary-school. It must have been incredibly difficult to control your magic; I imagine it must have been somewhat overwhelming sometimes, trying to hide who you are. But what an experience to have gone through. I hope I don't seem rude when I ask how old you are; are you approaching GCSE or A-Level examinations at all? I've tried explaining to my parents that O.W.L. exams next year will be the magical equivalent of GCSEs, but it's still very different, of course._

_I'm very sorry to hear about your aunt. But how wonderful that you're coming to Hogwarts in September! Will you be starting in First Year, or have you been studying magic independently? I suppose there might have been a risk in doing so, living with a non-magical relative who wouldn't have been able to reverse any accidental damage you might have inflicted._

_I have been reading the _Prophet_ and I am similarly disgusted by the Ministry's treatment of 'non-humans', and would love to correspond with you about your views on the subjects, however, with regards to societies and political activism, I am most concerned with those magical creatures who have absolutely no representation whatsoever._

_This is why I founded the _Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare_ last September, in the hope that awareness could be raised about the continued existence of slavery in our modern society._

_I enclosed a pamphlet with the _Society_'s manifesto and campaign aims, both short-term and long-, and for two Sickles you can join the _Society_: the Sickles will buy you a badge, and each badge sold funds the leaflet programme. At present, I have only seventeen members, though if you have heard of the _Society_ from outside sources, I'm hopeful that there is a possibility of going further with it. Especially if you're talking with Amos Diggory about house-elves._

_You asked about Winky: I don't know whether Snuffles has mentioned to you what occurred last July, at the Quidditch World Cup (between Ireland and Bulgaria; Ron and Harry say it's imperative you know that Ireland won the Cup, despite Viktor Krum catching the Snitch – I hope despite your Muggle education Snuffles has told you about Quidditch, though I keep trying to remind Harry and Ron that life does not revolve around the sport!) but during the match, we were sat in the Top Box, where we met a female house-elf named Winky; she was, we thought at the time, reserving a seat for her 'master', Barty Crouch Senior; Winky was terrified of heights, yet Crouch had her remain there all day and throughout the match. Later, when Death Eaters (ask Sirius what these are, I'm sure he'll tell you all about them) started burning up tents and torturing the Muggles who owned the campsite, levitating them in mid-air and making them spin like tops (it was utterly reprehensible), we saw Winky struggling to run away from the campsite, into the woods._

_Only a few days ago we discovered that Winky had been in the Top Box watching over Barty Crouch Sr.'s son, who was under the Imperius Curse and an Invisibility Cloak, but who had had a moment of lucidity in the Top Box, and had stolen Harry's wand: when the Death Eaters were running amuck in the campsite, Winky used her own brand of magic to bind Barty Crouch Jr. to her, and tried to drag him away from the campsite so he couldn't go and join/attack the Death Eaters. However, Winky had been told specifically by Crouch Sr. to remain in his tent, which might very likely have been set alight or at the very least trampled by the crowd of Death Eaters._

_Crouch Jr. used the wand he had stolen from Harry to conjure a Dark Mark, the symbol of You-Know-Who (Snuffles will probably have told you who he is) and when Ministry wizards Apparated to try and catch the culprit, Stunning Spells hit Winky and Crouch Jr. (still under his Invisibility Cloak) but Winky was found with Harry's wand nearby. It was assumed by the Ministry employees that Winky had used the wand, which is forbidden, to conjure the Mark. Mr Diggory was absolutely horrible to Winky, interrogating her about the Mark, and the wand, and where she had got it and demanding to know why she thought she had the right to 'play around' with it._

_Then Mr Crouch Sr. sacked Winky. At the time we thought it was solely for the reason that she had connected him to the Dark Mark (he had spent his entire career, especially during the War, to put Dark Wizards, even and especially his own son, into Azkaban, and was the one, I don't know if he's mentioned it, who threw Snuffles into jail without trial), but after hearing Crouch Jr.'s testimony—or rather, Harry's account of it—I have since learned that Crouch Sr. sacked Winky for allowing his son the use of a wand, and for not controlling him when he regained lucidity, which allowed him to conjure the Dark Mark._

_I believe that if Mr Crouch Sr. hadn't sacked Winky, his son would never have overpowered and ultimately killed him; kindness and compassion to house-elves affects wizards' lives too, and I think people should be aware that the phrase 'treat others as you wish to be treated' doesn't just apply to humans. In fact, as Snuffles once wisely said, one should always judge a man by how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. _

_That said, I'm surprised to hear you have been in contact with Mr Diggory. I confess he did not make a good impression at all when I saw how he treated Winky in the forest outside the World Cup stadium. I would love to hear what you and Mr Diggory have discussed with regards to house-elves, and whether his opinion on them has changed since discovering (does he know?) that it wasn't Winky who had conjured the Mark._

_The house-elf Dobby is another matter: he was once slave to the Malfoy family, a very Dark 'pureblood' family, all of whom have been Sorted into Slytherin, which about says it all. Dobby was treated brutally—do you know that house-elves are forced to punish themselves if they do not carry out their master's orders, or if they speak ill of their family, or go against their master's wishes?—by the family, and discovered a plot to set the basilisk controlled by the Heir of Slytherin on Hogwarts, to try and bring back You-Know-Who in the form of a memory preserved in a diary, which, when it became attached to Ginny Weasley, gained strength and power enough to leave the diary; this could have meant You-Know-Who's return, however Harry stopped him by destroying the diary with basilisk venom. Dobby tried numerous times to stop Harry getting to Hogwarts, afraid for Harry's life, but bound to keep his master's secrets, Dobby couldn't say outright what the danger was; at one point, Harry lost all the bones in one arm during one of Dobby's attempts to get Harry out of Hogwarts. To reward Dobby for continually trying to save his life, Harry tricked Mr Malfoy into freeing Dobby._

_When Dobby heard Winky had been set free too, he brought her to Hogwarts, to ask Professor Dumbledore for jobs. Dobby has even asked for wages, and though Professor Dumbledore offered him ten Galleons a week, and weekends off, Dobby says he 'beat Dumbledore down', and will accept only a Galleon a week, and one day off a month. I'm still hopeful that I can convince other house-elves that they can have and deserve the same thing._

_You're the first person I've ever encountered who is sincerely interested in S.P.E.W. and the only person outside Hogwarts who has ever contacted me about it, rather than my going door-to-door in Hogsmeade. I tried in the summer to encourage several proprietors in Diagon Alley to join, lending their support, however, I wasn't as successful as I wished._

_I've been researching it thoroughly, and elf-enslavement goes back centuries; I couldn't believe no-one had done anything about it before I started researching, and formed S.P.E.W._

_As you will see in the pamphlet, the short-term aims of S.P.E.W. are to secure house-elves fair wages and working-conditions. Long-term aims include changing the law on non-wand use, and to get an elf into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. They are shockingly underrepresented._

_As I have been promoting S.P.E.W. virtually alone, I would absolutely love to hear ideas from someone as concerned and enthusiastic about house-elves' treatment, so please feel free to write back with your thoughts; I would also love to review the legislation Mr Diggory gave you about house-elves and Wizarding property-laws. We can start the process of undoing such legislation by researching it, and if you have frequent access to Mr Diggory, it might be a point to ask him how to go about reversing it._

_I'm afraid Harry and Ron are shamefully indifferent about S.P.E.W., and make for a shoddy Secretary and Treasurer, therefore I'm sure neither would mind if I were to strip them of their position and give it to someone with an active interest in promoting elf-rights._

_I would also love to hear more about the house-elf you mentioned, Kreacher. _

_Before I sign this and send it off with Pigwidgeon, Ron's little owl (he's a little excitable) the others have asked me to put in a few notes: _

_a. Harry asks Snuffles whether he'll rescue him from the Dursleys at the earliest convenience, or he might follow his godfather's footsteps and blast a crater filled with a family of Muggles out of Privet Drive. *he asks Snuffles to remember what he did to his Aunt Marge, and threatens that if he's stuck in Privet Drive all summer, he'll go round the twist._

_b. Ron asks how Bill can ask for a rematch since he's going back to Egypt._

_c. Ron also wants to assure his mother that he _is _taking his exams seriously, but it's difficult to revise with Fred and George feeding Dr Filibuster fireworks to salamanders and setting off dungbombs and putting Bulbadox Powder in his underwear._

_d. Neville says thank you to Professor Lupin, for being so nice._

_e. Cedric says that he's doing alright, thank you, Mrs Weasley._

_And I'd like to add that I did give Crookshanks a few treats. He's probably missing his friend; he moped after I mentioned Snuffles to him._

_All that being said, I look forward to your reply,_

_Your sincerely,_

_Hermione Granger_

_President of the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare_.

"That's a nice long letter," Sirius said, glancing up from the _Prophet_, on which he was inking the crossword answers.

"It's from Hermione Granger," Maia grinned, and Sirius raised his eyebrows interestedly, peering over at the letter. "Want to read it?" Sirius set aside the _Prophet_ and took Hermione's letter; Maia took the newspaper and started going through it. She glanced over at Remus, who was frowning over the letter he had received.

"Bad news?" she asked; he looked so serious. Glancing up, he jumped a little, as if having forgotten she was there.

"Oh! No," Remus smiled tiredly. "Actually, it's good news. It's the reply to that letter you sent for me the other day."

"The one to the man in Amos Diggory's department? With the daughter who was bitten by a werewolf?"

"Yes, that's right," Remus nodded.

"What does he say?" Maia asked.

"Well, he wants to know everything," Remus said, glancing over at Maia and smiling. "Like Hermione, I think he's very excited to have met someone who shares his views."

"Are you going to meet him?" Maia asked. "To talk, I mean."

"Yes. He's invited me to his house today, actually; he's working from home this afternoon," Remus said, glancing at the letter. "He'd like to hear more about how I was able to go to Hogwarts. And what I'm planning to do, reversing legislation, trying to get a liaison into his department."

"You'll get his support, I bet," Maia smiled. "Oh, and Neville Longbottom says thank you for being so kind, and your encouragement. Hermione says she's coaching Neville through their exams, and she says Neville isn't the only one who's missing you." Remus's smile was so warm and sad at the same time that Maia's heart slipped. She sighed, glanced at Sirius, who was engrossed in Hermione's letter, and looked back at Remus. "So…what did the Order think…about my ideas?"

Remus glanced at her, and his smile was enigmatic, but his eyes were twinkling. "The rate you're going, you'll have the whole Ministry purged by the end of the year," he chuckled softly. "And a lot of what you suggested struck a lot of chords with some of the werewolves I have contact with."

"Distributing free Wolfsbane Potion, and the childcare-service?"

"And the school," Remus said, very softly, his eyes on the letter.

"You should also look into a reclassification of werewolves," Maia said, glancing at the S.P.E.W. manifesto on the table. "Especially since the Wolfsbane Potion lets you keep your minds. You're not dangerous anymore, if the Ministry would give you a chance to prove that."

"Is that from Hermione?" Remus asked, glancing at the leaflet too.

"Yes," Maia smiled. "On her organisation. The Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare."

"Spew?" Sirius glanced up, and chuckled deeply, feeding little bits of bacon to Pigwidgeon, the little owl.

"S.P.E.W.," Maia said reprovingly, glancing at her uncle. "You'd better hope I don't call you up on gross negligence."

"Negligence about what?"

"About Kreacher," Maia said, and Sirius' mouth opened in a little O.

"_I_ was in _Azkaban_. How could I have done anything? Anyway, you keep going on about house-elves and werewolves, what about me? Why aren't you campaigning for _my_ appeal?" Sirius asked indignantly. Maia chuckled.

"Well at least you can carry a wand and get a job," she pointed out. "When you're recognised as innocent, of course. And you don't have to go about wearing a loin-cloth."

"For which we're all very grateful," Remus said, down the other end of the table, and Sirius let out one of his deep, bark-like laughs.

"Careful, Moony; it's your birthday soon," Sirius remarked, and Remus grinned as he shook his head, scratching away with his quill, and Maia laughed at the reminder of the Sirius Strip-o-Gram sent to the professor of Transfiguration.

Sirius handed back Hermione's letter, which Maia reread, and rested her cheek against her palm, thinking. While Kreacher whistled and tidied up the kitchen, Sirius finished his breakfast, filled in the crosswords, and handed Maia the newspaper to read while he went up to shower and dress. Maia glanced at Remus, who finished writing and flexed his fingers, his eyes shadowed and tired as he glanced at the books spread before him.

"So…how many werewolves do you think you've brought over to your side?" Maia asked curiously. Remus glanced at her, smiling softly.

"Well, definitely a dozen," he said. "Old acquaintances of mine, people I…used to help, back when James was… Well, back when I _could_ help others who weren't as fortunate as I was." Maia nodded. "And they all have their own contacts, so I've asked them to talk to as many people as they can. Just so I can get a feel for what we all want, what we _need_. Then I'll have a better chance of representing us in the Ministry."

"Are you on duty tonight?" Maia asked; he looked very tired.

"No. It's Augusta's turn," Remus said, rubbing his face.

"Good. You look exhausted," Maia said.

"It's just…lingering side-effects," Remus said, glancing at her; she nodded. She narrowed her eyes at him thoughtfully, then stood up. She brought down an old cake-tin from the top of the dresser, opened the cupboards, and decanted from their boxes into the tin several chocolate Madeleines, a huge chunk of gooey chocolate-cake, a little wax-paper cone of marble-size chocoballs from the sweetshop in Diagon Alley, chocolate-chip muffins, cookies, macarons and some iced chocolate fairy-cakes, a handful of the miniature chocolate-ganache tarts, and two profiteroles piped with chocolate crème pâtisserie.

She secured the lid and passed the tin to Remus. "For the little girl."

"Maia…" Remus said softly, glancing from the tin to her.

"She might not have had the same cocoa feast as I made for you," Maia said, folding her arms gently over her chest. "If you're feeling the effects still, I can't imagine a five-year-old will be doing at all well. And you'll be astounded how amenable people can be when they have full bellies."

Sirius dropped downstairs, bearing a bit of note-parchment, freshly dressed. "Ready to go?" Maia glanced at Remus; before, Sirius had been grumpy and restless but unwilling to do anything. He had finished his breakfast, and was now looking eager to go out. "I rest my case," Maia said softly, and Remus chuckled, shaking his head.

"Thank you," he said sincerely. He glanced at Sirius. "Where are you headed?"

"Diagon Alley," Sirius said, glancing at Maia. "Then the Hobbit-hole. We can save Hogsmeade for when Cedric Diggory and Neville Longbottom want to get out of here for the day." That sounded fair; and, Maia thought, they would be able to show her around better than Sirius in his Animagus form.

As Kreacher showed them upstairs, so he could lock the door behind them, Sirius handed Maia the bit of parchment. Maia saw two series of measurements written down neatly.

"Measurements?" Maia said, glancing at Sirius.

"For Remus," he said. "The ones on the right are mine."

"Did you sneak into Remus' room while he was sleeping and take his measurements?" Maia asked, glancing at Sirius.

"No!" Sirius said indignantly. He blinked, glanced at her, and said, "I got Kreacher to do it." Maia laughed.

"So what am I buying?" she asked.

"I wrote some things down on the other side," Sirius said. "I'll help you choose colours and styles. But I thought I wouldn't tell Moony what you're up to; he always felt bad about accepting money from other people."

"I'm sure he'll appreciate the new robes," Maia said quietly. "And if he's going to be meeting with Ministry wizards, he should make as good an impression as he can, even if they just glimpse him once. The robes don't always make the wizard, but they do add some spice."

"Well said," Sirius grinned. He then transformed into his enormous dog-form, and Kreacher locked up as they left Number Twelve.

Diagon Alley was crowded; a Saturday, one of the last before Hogwarts broke up for the summer holidays, Maia spied a lot more parents buying up food and things to prepare their homes for the influx of children that would need feeding and entertaining. There were a lot of people at the cafés and ice-cream parlours; Florean waved from behind his sparkling-white counter, and Maia munched on a ripe Fiawsberry Pear as they wandered down the cobblestone street toward Gladrag's.

With Sirius' help, she picked out several new sets of robes for Remus: and some clothes for Sirius, who liked rich jewel colours and dragon-hide and leather, vibrant printed silk or dark, luxurious cashmere. She had everything altered, as much as she could without either Sirius or Remus being present, to their measurements, and had them wrapped in brown paper and string, tucked into her wicker-basket.

She loved wizards' styles; they were so much more adventurous with their choices of fabric and cut, and she had had fun going through velvets, embroidered tartan, silks and embossed leather; the cut of a dinner-jacket was very sleek, very Italian; button-down shirts had beaded cuffs, with two different fabrics at the collar and cuffs and the back shoulders; she had found beaded ascots, silk and embellished-velvet bowties and colourful ties, all in amazing colours and different patterns; wizards still wore a lot of hats, the twelve-planet pocket-watches; ascots were popular, too.

While she shopped for Sirius and Remus, Maia tried to think up things that could keep Sirius entertained whilst holed up in Number Twelve: she bought him another, more difficult book of crosswords; a few new Quidditch magazines, a new record and a small bag of new _Gambol & Jape's_ products, but what else interested him? Spending twelve years in prison hadn't given Sirius a lot of space for personal-growth, and being on the run hadn't allowed him to rehabilitate amongst wizarding society.

She was drawn again to the wizard-carpenter and his display of _beautiful_ inlaid boxes, and was reminded of Borgia. Sirius had agreed on the name for their owl, after watching _The Two Towers_ the other night. She stopped by _Eeylop's_ to pick up some owl-treats, and when she returned to Number Twelve, Remus was still out.

Sirius set Remus' new things in the wardrobe in the room Remus had claimed, and Maia pulled out Sirius', so she could properly tailor them to him.

"Look at you, with your new leather trousers," Maia chuckled, a pincushion strapped to her wrist as she pinned a sapphire-blue silk shirt to Sirius's broad-shouldered, slender frame. "What're you trying to do, look like me?" Sirius chuckled; more and more, Maia had been trying on Tonks' hand-me-downs, combining them with her favourite clothes, and using the combinations and inspiration from them to hone her designs she was working on alongside her sundresses. When Sirius took his new things upstairs, Maia sat with her clothing designs and her paint-sets, Hermione's letter and S.P.E.W. leaflet on the table with a cooling rack of plaited brioche loaves.

She was annotating the pamphlet when Sirius returned, yawning widely and flicking his wand at the teapot, which started steaming. She handed over the _Gambol & Jape's_ products, the crossword book and the new record, and let Pigwidgeon, sitting alongside G.H.E.F. on his perch by the window, have a few owl-treats. Some of the things she had written on the leaflet:

_- Chief long-term aim should be to get rep. in Ministry, not reversal of non-wand use law: will take forever, rep. far more achievable._

_- Research _nature_ of house-elf enslavement; what makes elves obey their masters' orders. Stop elves needing masters' permission to use magic._

_- Propose census for house-elves undertaken by Dept. of Magical Creatures; S.P.E.W. should carry one out regardless of whether Ministry does._

_- Begin programme to re-home house-elves without families (rigorous application process for wizarding families, checkups e.g. Muggle social-services)._

_- Hospital for old/abused house-elves – perhaps run _by_ house-elves._

_- Try and change wizards' attitudes on house-elf slavery. (Long-term aim)_.

"I thought today was our Day Off," Sirius said, eyeing the leaflet she had scribbled all over; he plucked it from the table, read through the print Hermione had written, and the notes Maia had made. "This looks like _work_ to me."

"It's recreation," Maia objected mildly, smiling as she took the pamphlet back. "I haven't officially joined S.P.E.W. yet."

"Hermione did seem rather excited in her letter," Sirius smiled, pouring them both tea. "She was driving Ron up the wall when she first started the club."

"It's a _society_," Maia said, glancing at Sirius. "Hermione asked to see the literature Mr Diggory gave me on house-elves." She fiddled with her paintbrush. "Is there a spell that can make duplicate copies of things?"

"Yes," Sirius said, after a moment's thought. "_Geminio_."

"Good. I won't have to give up my copies," Maia said, making a note of the charm in her diary. "I'm still annotating them." Sirius chuckled again, shaking his head.

"You're such a nerd," he chuckled softly, handing her a teacup. Maia shrugged. She glanced back at the pamphlet.

**Short-Term Aims**

_include_:

Safe working-conditions

Fixed minimum-wage

Weekends

Holidays

Compensation

Retirement pensions

'_Working-conditions_', she read again. She frowned.

"Sirius?"

"Mm?"

"Does Kreacher still sleep in the boiler-room?" Maia asked. Sirius glanced up from _The Help_, which he hadn't picked up for two days but was already engrossed in again. He frowned thoughtfully.

"Not sure." Maia set down her teacup, climbed out of her chair and made her way across the kitchen; she knocked on the door to the boiler-room, and when no-one answered Maia opened it a crack, peeking inside. Kreacher's blankets were clean now, but they were still arranged in a sort of nest.

_Some advocate for elf-equality you are_, she thought.

"Sirius, can you…help me with something?" Maia asked tentatively.

"What d'you need?" Sirius asked.

"Um, well…" And she told Sirius the inkling that had teased her mind. Sirius showed her how to access the attic—through a magically-shortened staircase from the fifth-floor up past the sixth and seventh storeys—but was prevented from joining her when the bell rang downstairs, someone popping in for a cup of tea probably.

Armed with her wand and a pair of dragon-hide gloves, Maia attacked the storage-rooms in a fervour. The upper-storeys of the house all featured those Wendy windows, which opened like narrow French doors onto tiny balconies; the attic was a series of rooms largely used as storage-rooms, each of them groaning with _stuff_, the accumulation of centuries of different generations. The stuff needed sorting through, the rooms a vigorous scrub, wash and a paint. Her apron on, her hair bound in a handkerchief, Maia pulled on her gloves, wand tucked in her pocket, and started to get to work. Sirius was sure the little beds he and Regulus had slept in as children had been moved up to the attic when they had grown too big.

For all the drawbacks of generations' worth of hoarded possessions, living in an ancient house did have its perks: downstairs, most of the furniture had been rearranged from different rooms after being washed, polished, sometimes relined and usually reupholstered. Maia discovered these storage-rooms were the places Kreacher had found lovely pieces he had thought they would like, while they redecorated. These storage-rooms were treasure-troves.

Maia found other pieces of furniture she liked, odd things that hadn't fit anywhere in the rest of the house, purchased perhaps on a whim because they were pretty, or they were the style at the time: like the mirrored glass coffee-table; or the folding table with the removable brass tray she found dusty and cobwebby in a corner with a set of Art Deco liqueur glasses; a set of folding deck-chairs with disintegrated fabric seats; a forget-me-not felted table-topper that featured a curious flat roulette wheel filled with funny symbols, animals and runes and numbers. Maia had played this game before, knew wizards enjoyed gambling, and it was a complex game she had loved instantly after learning the rules.

She found a Chinoiserie double-sided bookcase; at least fifty vases of different styles; numerous candelabra and candlestick-holders; bolts of fabric from renovations in ages past; a silver cake-stand; and several trunks that were filled with antique hats; she found a folding bistro-chair that could be repainted, and a polished octagonal sewing-table that needed relining; an upright piano that had been painted a vibrant turquoise, hidden under old tapestries, a collection of picture-frames and a tarnished telescope; a carved, almost Indonesian-style armchair that needed the seat reupholstering and some cushions; a collection of chessboards and pieces that had lost the rest of their sets; an apple-green ladder; and a narrow little table with two stools that tucked underneath it; and a small, pale-pink leather suitcase filled with expensive jewellery that seemed to have been collected, magpie-like, over the years, by someone who had enjoyed coming upstairs, sitting on a little embroidered footstool at the heating-stove, reading a book called 'Babbity Rabbity and Her Cackling Stump' (which made Maia dissolve into violent giggles) and admiring the jewels.

Systematically working through the contents room-by-room, Maia organised the expensive debris of her _family_. She conjured a bucket, filling it with soapy hot water, and washed anything she could get her hands on, the walls washing themselves with an enchanted sponge. She set trinkets on top of emptied-out dressers and chests-of-drawers, ready to be polished, and spent a little while going through the contents of the numerous wardrobes, trunks and cabinets left in one of the two front-rooms. They were filled with sumptuous antique dresses, wigs, breeches, swords and hats of every kind, as well as trinket-boxes, odd bits of jewellery, an assortment of teacups, cocktail glasses, packets of letters, diaries belonging to long-dead relatives, beaded reticule purses, tri-corn hats, parasols and feather boas, ostrich plumes, shawls, silk tailcoats, waistcoats of every cut and colour, embroidered and beaded; there were pirate-hats and tall leather boots, Indian headdresses, silk turbans and the type of cream uniform an officer in the turn-of-the-century Imperial Army would wear, with the tall safari hat and a riding-crop!

In another trunk there was a set of angel wings; tiaras and crowns, sceptres and every wonderful thing that could be utilised to put on a wonderful amateur play or to play make-believe. Crammed in the corners of that same room was a hobby-hippogriff; a rocking-dragon; a stuffed leopard; a silk tent; several hammocks; an _exquisite_ dollhouse (unfortunately home to a long-dead family of Puffskeins) and a toy broomstick; a moth-eaten carpet that unfurled itself and hovered three foot in the air for Maia to climb onto and fly like Aladdin; _rigging_; a wicker basket stuffed with antique dolls, their faces so lifelike, their hair so shiny, Maia wondered if unwitting Muggles had been Transfigured; a booth for puppet-shows; and a miniature wooden folly painted to look like marble. She had yet to find a TARDIS, but she kept her eyes peeled! There was, in short, everything needed to keep a child entertained.

"Oh _wow_!" she gasped, upon opening a smallish wooden box for a top-hat, and revealing a mass of antique _Brownie_ cameras, as well as several other, newer but still vintage cameras, with a discoloured velvet pouch containing numerous lenses, loupes and even a few packets of negatives that she picked up, holding to the light streaming in through the windows. She wondered who the people in the photographs were, whether they had once played with all of these toys, used their ancestors' clothes to play dress-up and make-believe. Surrounded by toys, costumes, stage-props, Maia chuckled to herself, thinking of the most recent _Doctor Who_ Christmas special, when the Doctor visited a war-refugee family and turned the children's bedroom into the most bizarre and wonderful playroom ever conceived, and, laughing to herself, Maia started putting things back in their trunks and boxes, to come back to later.

She did manage to find what she was looking for. Two small, children's bed-frames had been beautifully made of rich rosewood, inlaid in beautiful motifs with rare woods like some of the other furniture downstairs, and the mattress for one had been protected. She used a charm to shrink a polished dresser to hip-height, perfect for a house-elf, and found an old-fashioned copper bathtub with a raised back, a folding-screen, which she again shrank, and recalled the bolts of old fabric, a small, still-serviceable rug she and Sirius had removed from a boudoir, and a copper towel-rack.

Leaving the attic behind, Maia had to climb down the magically shortened staircase to the fifth-floor, then climbed back up to the seventh-storey, so she could open up one of the front rooms with large Wendy windows; she brought up the _Singer_ sewing-table, creating some nice, plain curtains and a button-up blind, arranging the furniture, and even found the bedding especially fitted to the little bed, soft white Egyptian cotton embroidered in ivory with an _RB_ monogram. She used magic to paint the walls soft dusky-gold, echoing the hue of the copper bathtub, which she hid by the tiled heating-stove in the corner of the room behind the folding-screen, and set some fluffy towels over the rack. A child's rocking-chair was set in the corner, beside a small blanket-box, polished and painted with a silver-green dragon, into which she planned to put a collection of blankets and quilts she hadn't yet knitted or sewn.

Folding into the dresser-drawers a selection of brand-new pillowcases, each sewn with a button in the centre, she had also collected one of the trinket-boxes she had Transfigured from mice during her last lesson with Sirius. She had collected stick-pins as she had found them throughout the house, and nestled them inside the trinket-box, setting it on the dresser with a lamp, a photograph of the Black sisters, and one of Regulus; Kreacher seemed to have especially doted on Maia's father.

Discovering the kitchen empty, she collected Kreacher's treasures from the boiler-room, arranging them on the dresser and a sinuous occasional-table she set beside the bed with another lamp. She listened intently, sure she would hear a shriek of "_MY PRECIOUS IS LOST_!" when Kreacher noticed his treasures were missing. Using her wand to inscribe the name '_Kreacher_' on the door, she closed it, and made her way downstairs, to start preparing things for before the meeting.

The others now filed into either the dining-room or the kitchen when they congregated before meetings, and Remus introduced two of the four new members brought into the Order, a young-man with curling blonde hair nearing thirty, and another, barely in his early-twenties, who was tall and dark-haired with lovely cheekbones and lips. Both men looked tired, the younger even more so than the blonde. The curly-blonde wore a neat set of robes; the young man wore neat pinstripe trousers, a lovely patterned shirt, a contrasting but complementing skinny tie, and a cardigan; he looked like he needed severely fattening up. She set out a plate of crackling scones and the teapot, as well as a large basket of fresh homemade sandwich-rolls, varying from glazed to star-patterned to knotted, and covered in cheese, seeds and nuts, and which she and Kreacher had stuffed with cold cuts and cheese, pickle or piccalilli, or left plain with jars of jam set out with spoons.

"Tuck in," she said, handing a plate to the younger man.

"It's a hard life, living here with Maia," Sirius said, smiling warmly at the plate he had loaded for himself.

"Maia, this is Christian Lovett," Remus said, indicating the dark-haired young man. "And this is Julian Ruffio." The curly-blonde glanced up, smiling; he offered his hand.

"So you're Maia," he said, smiling.

"I am she," Maia smiled back, shaking hands. She glanced from Remus and back to Mr Ruffio. "Oh! You and Remus met today!"

"Yes, we did. Thank you for the care-package," Mr Ruffio beamed.

"You're quite welcome," Maia smiled.

"We were just talking about some of your ideas, Maia," Remus said.

"Oh, really?" Maia smiled. "I've got some more, if you want to hear them." Sirius chuckled, shaking his head. He shot Mr Ruffio and Christian a look that said, '_Told you so_'. Maia ignored him.

"What've you been thinking about?" Remus asked.

"Well, I just wanted to ask, first, how many werewolves are…well, dependent on others? The legislation I read said that it's impossible for werewolves to find paid work," Maia said. "So how many actually go without basic things like food and clothing?"

"Nearly all," Remus said heavily. Maia nodded.

A thought had arisen while she had been altering Remus' new clothes, as to what to do with the old ones. She and Sirius had salvaged everything where possible from their purge of the wardrobes and dressers in the house; it seemed none of her relatives liked to throw anything away. But there were some very handsome, albeit rather old-fashioned robes for both men and women among the collection, and Maia couldn't help wonder…well, how many werewolves _didn't_ have someone providing for them. It seemed such a waste to throw the clothing away, and she didn't want to just give it all to the second-hand shop in Diagon Alley; some witches and wizards might need it.

"I was afraid of that. But I thought, Sirius and I saved a lot of the robes and things that we could while we went through the house, what if, instead of selling them to a second-hand shop or throwing them out, I could, you know, alter them, make them more modern, and pass them on to werewolves who need them," Maia said. She sighed softly and glanced around the kitchen. "And, I was thinking about how miserable and in pain you were the other day, Remus, and I thought, if we hadn't cooked for you, you probably wouldn't have eaten anything, but that stew did you a load of good. So what if, I don't know, we could provide a big hot, cooked lunch, the day after the full-moon. And something chocolaty, of course."

The four men, and those Order members who had been listening in, blinked, looking suddenly thoughtful. Maia sighed, frowning.

"How come nobody's started a charity to _help_ people who are affected? Just the basic things that everybody deserves! It's no wonder the lengths werewolves are forced to go to." Remus made several notes on a sheaf of parchment he and Mr Ruffio had been going over.

"That's a good idea, about the clothes," he said, glancing up.

"Yeah," Maia nodded. She glanced around the kitchen again. "If I asked everyone here to just bring an old set of robes or something, we'd have _loads_ of stuff! That'd be a start!" Remus exchanged a glance with Mr Ruffio and with Christian Lovett, a tiny smile playing at the corners of his lips. Maia frowned at Remus thoughtfully.

"Maia," Remus said gently, touching Maia's arm to attract her attention, and she glanced around. He smiled softly. "Have you met Madam Marchbanks and Tiberius Ogden yet?"

"Er…no," Maia said. Remus nodded to a very old, frail-looking witch in beautiful robes, and an elderly, stately silver-haired wizard wearing two waistcoats and embroidered jacquard velvet-trimmed tailcoat-robes, both of whom had been supplied little glasses of her plum brandy.

"Old friends of Dumbledore's," Remus said, waving at Madam Marchbanks, who smiled back, waving. "They're both senior members of the Wizengamot; very highly-respected. They joined us today, in fact. They'd be two to talk to about Ministry legislation in the Wizengamot."

"And you might mention to Ogden that you're the one who made that brandy," Sirius said in a low voice, winking at Maia, who chuckled.

"Excuse me," a little voice said, and Maia jumped as something curled around her bare ankle. She glanced down; beneath her chair, a pair of luminous blue eyes glowed at her. "You're standing on my sleeve." Maia glanced down again; she was indeed standing on the little puff sleeve of a pretty little white frilled cotton polo dress.

"So sorry," she said, removing her foot. She glanced down at the little girl, wondering where she had come from. "I might point out that you're lying under my chair."

"I have to, I'm afraid," the little girl said, with a long-suffering sigh. "I've been put in the dungeon by the _evil_ Maharaja." The little girl's eyes travelled to Mr Ruffio, who was in heavy discussion with Remus. Maia caught a glimpse of long blonde curls tumbling from under the chair, and she smirked.

"I see," she chuckled; Mr Ruffio was her father; this was the little girl she had heard had been attacked by a werewolf. "Perhaps I could slip a key to you through the bars."

"I wouldn't risk it," the little girl said, gazing up at her. "The Maharajah has tortured many men."

"But I'm a lady," Maia said, glancing down.

"Opal, come out from under there," Mr Ruffio said gently, glancing at the little girl under the chair. "You're going to trip someone up."

"I can't! I'm in prison!"

"Oh, of course," the young-man smirked in amusement. He caught Maia's eye and smiled.

"Maia, this is my daughter Opal," he said warmly, his expression that of utmost affection as he glanced down at the little girl. "She's five."

"And I'm in prison for it," Opal sighed, gazing imploringly at Maia.

"The meeting's going to start in a moment," Sirius said, glancing at Maia, then at Opal, who had clambered out from under Maia's chair.

"Okay," Maia nodded. She glanced at Opal. "Why don't we go to the playroom?" Opal turned wide eyes on her.

"You have a _playroom_?" she asked delightedly. Just that expression was enough to make Maia push back her plans for this evening, and she nodded, then smiled.

"I can bring out my dolls' house, too," she said, and Opal grinned, revealing shining little pearls for teeth.

Maia took Opal up to the playroom on the third-floor. Kreacher had helped her to clean it so thoroughly the original wallpaper and hand-painted border of exotic animals were sparkling and vibrant; each of the play-toys had been cleaned scrupulously, the old drawings from the walls boxed neatly, preserved in an attic room with several mementos from Sirius' and Regulus' childhoods. A low table had been brought in, on which Maia set her huge doll's-house, which was an exact replica of the Big House her family had lived in for generations. There were tiny, exquisite dolls bearing the resemblance of her mother's family, and a new one of Maia herself (there had been a series of them; a baby Maia, a toddler, a child, a pre-teen, a young adolescent) as a teenager. On another low table, with a little water-bottle attached to it filled with honey-water, was an elaborate gold cage that might once have housed exotic birds, but now housed the cluster of Puffskeins Maia had found on her first day.

Maia kept Opal entertained: they played with the dolls' house, then Maia brought out a Puffskein for Opal to cuddle with; her giggles rang around the room delightfully when the Puffskein's long red tongue tickled her ear. Maia taught her how to use a skipping-rope, and how to do several tricks with an old yo-yo of Sirius'. When Opal wanted to see Maia's bedroom, she found Maia's watercolours, and chatted happily about _her_ favourite fairytales.

Her father was a Muggle-born wizard; from Opal, who was rather precocious but adorable, Maia learned that her pureblood mother had left them. She supposed she couldn't stand that her daughter had become infected by a werewolf, but she couldn't find any sympathy for the woman who had abandoned her daughter.

Opal had never been to school, just like Christian's brother Hadrian: but she was only five years old, and sometimes she would stay with her Muggle grandparents, who liked to do nice things with her, realising she was constantly ill—but Maia wondered whether they knew about her being a werewolf. Maia listened for ten minutes while Opal told her about the freshly-made chips her Nanny had cooked in _lard_. They were "the best chips I've ever had!" She told Maia about going roller-skating with her cousins, and Maia brought her old rollerblades out from her trunk, found the tiny pair of roller-skates she and Sirius had discovered in the trunk of toys in the corner of the playroom, and they skated around the playroom, Opal giggling and tugging on Maia's skirt to go faster without the risk of falling on her face.

Promising Opal that the roller-skates were there for whenever she wanted to play with them, and giving her duplicated copies of the fairytale watercolours she had adored, Maia led Opal downstairs; she was smiling and cradling a Puffskein in her hands, gazing adoringly at it as it purred contentedly.

Dinner was called for by Sirius, who poked his head out of the packed dining-room long enough to suggest Maia go and get some takeout. With her father's permission, Maia latched onto Opal's hand, and walked with her to Diagon Alley. The little girl chatted away happily, and Maia's thoughts turned to the hoard of treasures she had found in the attic, perfectly suited to entertaining a child. In Diagon Alley, Maia bought several portions of fish and chips, Opal entranced by the beautifully coloured tiling on the walls, and they shared a secret; Maia bought them both a small, one-scoop ice-cream from Florean Fortescue's, which they enjoyed on their walk back to Number Twelve, while Opal talked about her grandfather's propensity to have cream, ice-cream _and_ custard on his apple-pie after Sunday lunch. She also told Maia about Christian Lovett, whose parents had been afflicted with the bite by Fenrir Greyback, when they had protected Christian as a child. Christian was unaffected, and in his early-twenties, he worked at the Ministry as undersecretary to Mr Diggory, and financially supported his parents. It was to them that Opal went every full-moon. The smell of the fish and chips wafted through the house, and Maia used magic to stretch the portions further so anyone who wanted a plate could help themselves.

"She's called Spike," Opal declared proudly, showing her dad the Puffskein. He tried not to laugh; didn't succeed, and chuckled as Opal rested her nose on the edge of the kitchen-table, setting 'Spike' on the table so she could stare, watching the little custard-coloured ball of fluff scoop up crumbs with its long, thin tongue.

Maia had a very animated discussion with Mr Ruffio—who insisted on being called Jules—about her idea for a primary-school for werewolf children. The theory she came up with was that if the school was run _by_ werewolves, as well as educating young ones, the full-moon was an issue to all and therefore, not really an issue for any. Wolfsbane Potion could be given out in the week preceding the full-moon at the school to relieve financial burdens, and the adults, who would also transform but be under the influence of Wolfsbane, could accompany the children during their transformations, perhaps in a fortified room of the school itself.

As it was, Jules just wanted to overturn the legislation Umbridge had pushed through the Wizengamot—it was a godsend they had Madam Marchbanks and Tiberius Ogden, two incredibly influential members of the Wizengamot.

"Perhaps I could just see to Dolores Umbridge," Sirius suggested darkly, his expression slightly murderous. Several people chuckled.

"Well, you do have a tally of thirteen to fill," Maia said, and Sirius shot her a wolfish grin.

"Now, don't encourage him," Remus said solemnly, his eyes twinkling as he turned to Maia.

"Sirius hardly _needs_ encouraging!" Maia chuckled, and Sirius gave his deep, bark-like laugh.

It was with a mixture of the new members still chatting about the less top-secret matters of the Order and the old favourites who had remained for dinner: Ailith was working in a corner, writing letters to her various contacts, while Vittorio was on his violin, quietly; Jack scribbled away in his lyrics journal. While Mr and Mrs Weasley had gone home, Bill remained, talking to Mr Diggory about goblin rights.

Kreacher sat up at the table, watching over Opal, who had been placed between Maia and Tonks, who kept Metamorphosing her nose until Opal went into near-hysterics, while Maia collapsed with laughter, taking photographs, and had to use the tablecloth to wipe her eyes as she hiccoughed. The sound of Opal's beautiful giggles rang around the kitchen, and Maia saw Jules' eyes go slightly misty as he gazed at his little girl.

Spike in her father's pocket, clutching the fairytale illustrations Maia had copied for her, Opal was carried out of Number Twelve, fast-asleep at the end of the evening; Maia had suggested she could babysit Opal if need be. Christian Lovett was sent off with an invitation to bring his parents in, apparently they had held high positions in the Ministry before receiving the bite. Ailith remained at Grimmauld Place to develop the photographs she had taken (to finish the roll of film she had used for photographs that were to accompany an article). Maia had sent everyone home with a request to bring any old, quality robes to the next meeting.

She took Kreacher upstairs to show him the room she had put together for him.

Like the day Maia had given him the stickpin with the Black family crest on it, Kreacher fell into hysterical sobs at such a display of kindness. Maia tucked him into his new little bed, leaving him sobbing with delight to himself, and went to bed herself, listening to Sirius' and Ailith's laughter drifting up from the kitchen to the sound of Jack's deep voice and Vittorio's violin, Remus and Tonks chatting amicably and Elphias Doge enjoying an after-dinner tipple with Madam Marchbanks and Tiberius Ogden.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review!


	13. Chapter 13

**A.N.**: Hello everyone. Slow reviews day when I last updated this story. Lucky for you, I'm forgiving…most of the time. That and I've finished university for the summer and have nothing to do now until I do my next waitressing gig for a wedding-catering company next Saturday!

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_13_

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><p>Whether it was out of the goodness of their hearts or the threat of Maia's increasing talent with joke-jinxes, members of the Order brought by their disused robes, some rich in fabric and detail, some of them quite plain and serviceable, but they had all been taken care of. With the ever-amassing number of members, the quantity of robes donated was quite overwhelming. And it felt <em>good<em>, seeing the mounds of robes collected in trunks on the second-storey gallery where the _Singer_ sewing-table had been moved.

While Remus was out spreading the word to his contacts, Sirius was helping Kreacher get the house ready for an influx of teenagers. Cedric Diggory and Neville Longbottom would be the first to arrive, and conscious of Neville's love of Herbology, Maia had set aside a room with a deep window-seat for the two, so Neville could bring in potted-plants and things. Mrs Weasley, who had started to devote afternoons to helping the redecoration process, was a big help; she had decided to help Maia with the altering of the donated robes. Being proficient at doing a lot with very little, and up-to-date with the current styles, one afternoon saw Maia and Mrs Weasley working steadily through a rack of robes, altering them to current styles. Not for the first time, Maia thanked her aunt for raising her to be so multitalented, and it didn't take long at all for majority of the robes to be altered, ready for Remus to distribute among his contacts that needed them.

Maia's offer to babysit Opal had been taken to heart; apparently, Jules was worried Maia had somehow entranced his daughter, for Maia was all the little girl had talked about the day after his first meeting with the Order. Maia knew what it was like to grow up isolated; she herself had never been able to have friends over for tea or sleepovers or even birthday-parties. She and Opal had chatted about Opal's cousins, similar age to herself and enjoying going to _school_. Reminded of Bill's request for a clean copy of one of Diane's language workbooks, Maia had brought out the entire collection of beautifully illustrated, handmade workbooks, and wondered whether she could give copies to Opal. Jules often worked from home, to take care of his daughter, but sometimes she was left with her grandparents, who doted on her. When they couldn't watch her, Jules remembered Maia's offer, and brought Opal to Number Twelve.

Opal was so energetic that, if nothing else, her presence gave Sirius something to think about; she loved exploring, and after she had disappeared, a shriek had sent them all pelting upstairs to save Opal from the murderous ghoul living in the sixth-storey bathroom. In helping Maia keep Opal entertained, Sirius was kept too busy to grumble and pout and waste away up in his room, stewing in self-pity. Opal became part of their daily routine, dropped off in the morning by Jules, and she absolutely delighted in egg-hunting at the Hobbit-hole, munching on fresh peas and strawberries as Maia and Sirius picked through the vegetable-patches; Opal noticed things Maia hadn't on daily walks to Diagon Alley, leading to much more exploration, and while Maia and Mrs Weasley were steadily going through the second-hand robes, Maia had also been working on her own sundresses, and the designs for more edgy, wintry clothing; she started to sew little dresses for Opal, and they were beautiful, filled with detail, lined and easily-washable, with removable pinafores. She even made tiny, decorated ballet-slippers for her. Opal enjoyed Maia teaching her how to knit, crochet and sew, and with a pang in her chest, Maia had found herself one morning sitting in her armchair, with Opal perched on the footstool, tucked right up against her legs.

The same way Maia had sat with Diane as a little girl.

Opal usually spent the entire day at Number Twelve: and during Maia's magic-lessons, Opal was provided with entertainment. A tiny vintage-style school-desk had been brought down from the playroom, and it was at that Opal sat, humming to herself while she coloured pages Maia had traced from her fairytale illustrations. Or, if he was home, Remus would sit with her, gently, kindly guiding her through the first pages of Maia's childhood workbooks in maths, reading and writing.

Remus had confessed to her, one evening, "I've never enjoyed anything quite as much as I did teaching."

"Would you go back to Hogwarts, if you could?" Maia asked curiously.

"I'm not sure," Remus said, head canted to one side. "But I do like your idea for a primary-school. So many of my kind…grew up with very little dignity, no true bonds, often openly disdained and hated by their families… I was always most proud of the way my students grew, not just academically…like Neville Longbottom, seeing his confidence grow was very gratifying. It would be nice to catch young werewolves early, to give them that dignity and confidence, and give them somewhere safe…where they will always be accepted and liked."

"Maybe you could teach at the primary-school," Maia had teased, smiling softly. "Headmaster Lupin. It's got a nice ring to it." Remus had chuckled softly, looking thoughtful.

"Perhaps. Politics is not my cup of tea," he said softly.

"Isn't it?"

"No," Remus shook his head.

"So why are you leading the Order's attack on legislation? Why are you acting as liaison to the Ministry?" Maia asked curiously.

"Well, for one, I'm here. Dumbledore thought we should get a werewolf to liaison with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and here I am…a fully-made werewolf," Remus said, sighing, and Maia glanced at him carefully. He looked miserable.

"If you did teach at this imaginary primary-school," she said lightly, changing the subject, "would you teach the children languages? And handicrafts, like knitting and sewing?"

"I'm adept with a needle and thread," Remus smiled tiredly, head leaning on his hand; he sat in an armchair, cradling a mug of tea. "But I cannot say I'd join you in making another of those astounding quilts. And I never had call to learn foreign languages."

"Well, perhaps you can teach yourself," Maia said, her lips twitching with a teasing smile. "I can make copies of Diane's workbooks. You and Opal can have lessons together." Remus chuckled.

"I do like the workbooks you gave Opal," he said thoughtfully.

"Diane made them," Maia said softly.

"If I were to teach at this imaginary primary-school," Remus said, eyes twinkling, "I think I'd have to give copies to the children for exercise-books." Maia chuckled to herself, and their conversation, her knowledge of Muggle history and Diane teaching her history of magic, spurred a project so engaging, Sirius and Remus both had to help her with it.

Diane had been exceptionally talented in creating the workbooks for Maia, to teach her languages, Ancient Runes, Astronomy, Arithmancy and maths, writing, reading and specific events in wizarding history. But Maia's knowledge of the Muggle world had come from her integration within it, from her GCSE and A-Level History coursework, and her own independent study in subjects that fascinated her. Maia wanted to create a beautifully-illustrated, interactive history-book that incorporated both Wizard and Muggle histories together with _culture_. This was the summer of the Jubilee and the third London Olympics.

Sirius and Remus had never heard of a cohesive history-book that documented the histories of the Wizarding world and the Muggle world mingled together in one unbroken timeline—as if it was all the same history, not two intrinsically separate spheres. Sirius said that if Maia was to succeed in putting together this book, Muggle Studies and History of Magic would be forever changed; wizards would have access to Muggle history, without having to integrate _with_ Muggles.

She wanted to create a timeline of Kings and Queens of England alongside historical Wizard leaders prior to the International Statute of Secrecy, and then Ministers for Magic after, with special mention of foreign Muggle leaders—Mandela, Napoleon, American presidents (Tricky Dicky, JFK, the Founding Fathers) Gandhi and Evita—and notes about famous native Celtic witches and wizards and Roman invasions, prior to Hogwarts' founding and William the Conqueror in 1066. She wanted to make the entire book a cohesive timeline of wizard and Muggle history and culture of the previous millennium, detailed enough that adults would read it, but not so academic that young children wouldn't enjoy it.

She got to pull out her old notes and workbooks and essays and books, to start piecing together a timeline of Wizarding history—goblin rebellions, giant wars, the International Statute of Secrecy, and the numbers, such as they stood, of the casualties of the last wizarding war. She wanted to do a page on her own family, and on the Potters. Sirius giggled, and suggested Maia write up a timeline of _Harry_'s adventures, and she got interested in the history of the Triwizard Tournament.

On the Muggle side, she was planning bits on things like the Crusades; the War of the Roses; Henry VIII and his colourful marriages (discovering once and for all whether Anne Boleyn was truly a witch!); the Reformation; Elizabeth I and Shakespeare; the European witch-hunts (and the current perspective on them as purely political, economic crusades against widows, the mentally impaired, political opponents, combined with the influence of the changing nature of the Devil in the Bible, the printing-press aiding people in pointing the finger at _women_); the Industrial Revolution (with snippets of Blake poetry and its significance); piracy; the French Revolution, with a removable paper-doll of Marie-Antoinette and several different costumes as the decadent fashions changed throughout her rule; Queen Victoria, with a paper-doll of her prettiest daughter for the Victorian fashions, with key moments during her reign.

Using sticky-notes, she went through her personal library, seeking her favourite portraits of particular monarchs; highlighting her favourite poems from Wyatt, Blake, Wordsworth, Shakespeare's sonnets and her favourite excerpts from his plays to illustrate; books on WWII planes; the invention of medical 'inoculations', the light-bulb, the cotton-gin, the bicycle and the Tin Lizzy; a timeline of Charles Dickens' publications, with illustrations of infamous characters and her favourite quotes; other authors of Muggle classics; she painted the Mad Hatter's tea-party, to go with facts about Muggle milliners going mad from the mercury, the Jabberwocky poem, nonsense-literature exemplified by Carroll, the first use of the word 'chortle' and the phrase 'Curiouser and curiouser'.

She had a plan to write about different religions, the Spanish Armada, and the first colony in America, King James I and his obsession with witchcraft, Shakespeare's Scottish play; the invention of the printing-press; Florence Nightingale; the Suffragettes; Princess Elizabeth working as an engineer in the war-effort during World War II; she painted a sea of poppies, with the most famous poem from the War.

She painted portraits of the six wives of Henry VIII, which Maia enchanted to move; and wrote about the ideals of Elizabethan beauty and the dangers of the cosmetics they used; she did a moving illustration of children dancing around the beribboned maypole, and the tradition of the hot-cross bun (with a recipe); portraits of the Brothers Grimm with figures from some of the classic fairytales they had documented; an intricate family-tree she had sketched to show Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's family-line; a piece on the _Titanic_; Prince Albert's Great Exhibition; the Last Russian Tsar and his family; Jane Austen and a few sewing-projects; a bit on English Muggle politics through the ages; and artists, Michelangelo, the genius Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh; a simplified take on the Wall Street Crash, with the Boom and its influence on the writing of Fitzgerald, the infamous Great Gatsby, the Red Scare; Hitler, in conjunction with the rise of Gellert Grindelwald in Europe; the legendary status of Winston Churchill as a wartime Prime Minister; and the influence of the London Blitz on literature like _The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe_; and JRR Tolkien's publication of the epic _The Lord of the Rings_.

She had made a note to put together bits on pop-culture from the 50s onwards, with Elvis, Twiggy, The Beatles and the 'British Invasion' and 60s rock-n'-roll, the _Beach_ _Boys_, surf-culture in California; the emergence of punk alongside Vivienne Westwood's famous t-shirts; interwoven with timelines of Muggle films and other novels published that to this day were considered the epitome of literary perfection, as well as the influence of things like _Doctor Who_ on Muggle culture—terrifying kids in the 60s and scaring the hell out of those same kids, now adult, with the new series. She wanted to do a bit on Margaret Thatcher as the first female Prime Minister; and reproduce the popular red-white-and-blue campaign poster of Barack Obama, the first black President of the United States of America.

The project was going to involve a lot of work, a lot of _detail_. She had begun making lists of the contents, trying to get everything in sequential order, designing the pages, fonts, the interactive parts, the illustrations and timelines and typefaces, cultural facts. Her independent studies came out here, the amount of knowledge she had acquired and the sheer breadth of her study. After eleven years of schooling, she was gratified that she was actually _using_ what she had studied since the age of five.

"I would _love_ to write down measures from different pieces of music, and when the page is opened, the music plays," Maia beamed softly. "Mozart, Vivaldi, Schubert—Tchaikovsky, with a piece on the changing nature of ballet, the use of the music in Disney's _Sleeping Beauty_, illustrated in Art Deco style, and I can add a bit about the ballerina Pavlova having the pudding named for her as something fun, maybe with the easiest meringue recipe."

"What about Shakespeare?" Sirius smiled. "Why don't you have the illustrations act out the scenes?"

"Have them act out the scenes…as if the viewer is _sat in the Globe Theatre!_" she whispered, gazing at him wondrously. "Oh _Sirius_…"

She had visions of the fairy court in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, Romeo at the balcony, Hamlet's monologue, the madness of King Lear, Lady Macbeth, '_Out, damned spot!_' She imagined how much easier it would have been for her classmates to understand Shakespeare if they had seen it all acted out in front of them, to hear the subtleties and inflections in the delivery of the lines. At GCSE her English Literature class had been taken to Stratford-Upon-Avon to watch _Hamlet_—David Tennant as Hamlet, half the audience had been drooling teenaged-girls—and she had loved it.

So Sirius, and sometimes Remus, started to help Maia with the magical aspects of the workbook; it was _very_ good practice both for her recalling facts about history of magic, and for practicing charms to animate paintings, make specific music emanate from the page when the book was opened, even _scents_.

The two hours set aside per day for her magic lessons had begun to be inadequate. She was learning very quickly, thrown into the deep end, necessity demanding quick results, as had been the case during cleaning of the upstairs rooms, where cleaning and defensive spells had become necessary against the inhuman _occupants_. She had long ago memorised her mother's now out-of-date books, and had read through all of the books Tonks had handed down to her, as well as the ones she had bought at _Flourish and Blotts_. She was a fast reader, and absorbed everything she read like a sponge, spouting it off word-perfectly months later.

She memorised the Wizengamot Charter of Rights and all of the amendments made to the International Statute of Secrecy, and the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery; she memorised who had passed the amendments and acts and bills through the Wizengamot and in what year; as a little girl, she had made up a song to help memorise the names and terms of every Minister for Magic to date.

This rhyme, she recorded in a miniature book, the size of Opal's _Little Miss and Mr Men_ "Little Miss Sunshine" storybook, with hand-painted portraits of the Minister for Magic, their name, terms, their greatest accomplishments, one to a page with an elaborate 'frame' around their moving portrait, with a ribbon that flickered across the page in a continuous line over each page, with the lyrics of the rhyme she had made up years ago to memorise the details. She had since heard Opal murmuring the song breathlessly to herself while she coloured in the fairytales Maia had traced for her. She also got to work on creating a similar book for the Muggle Prime Ministers—though they were not nearly as colourful as the witches and wizards who had headed the magical community in Britain since the 1600s.

Where it was possible, due to the specific timings of the potions themselves, Maia brewed a potion a day from her textbooks; Sirius had found his old Potions essays, and Maia had taken the titles and set herself homework.

Sirius thought she was _addled_.

In Diagon Alley, which she visited every morning with Opal and Padfoot, she would gather plants, fungi, cuttings and flowers from the Herbology emporium and the market-stalls, buying books on Herbology to study them properly. Her windowsills, and those of the study, the kitchen and the sides and steps of the front-stoop, were slowly but surely being filled up by potted plants and flowers, and a collection of herbs, flowers and roots were drying from the ceiling in one of the pantries. After a brief glimpse inside the greenhouse, Sirius had magically locked the door so Opal couldn't get in, and forbid Maia from entering it on account of something called "Devil's Snare", which would throttle them to death without bright sunlight.

The anticipated Hogwarts summer-holidays meant the liberation not only of Cedric Diggory and Neville Longbottom, but also of the teachers, and being part of the original Order, Professor McGonagall had also brought in the Herbology professor, Pomona Sprout, as well as the gifted Charms professor, Filius Flitwick.

Maia had begun to wonder, "whether it's worth me asking to…I don't know, ask for paid tuition from them."

"From Professor Sprout?" Sirius asked, glancing up from the _Standard Book of Spells, Grade Four_ chapter they were going through today. Maia was a _quick_ learner; and with her 'teacher's' undivided attention, she got through spells with proper instruction. Sirius said he had told Professor Dumbledore how quickly Maia had gone through the first _Standard Books_ and the _Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_, and Sirius said Professor Dumbledore had just chuckled, said _Bravo_, and told Sirius to encourage Maia to "continue with her extracurricular projects".

"Yes. And…Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick," Maia said, glancing at Sirius again. "I mean, I won't be going anywhere but First Year if I'm not able to _prove_ I'm caught up with some of the upper years. If I could get up to O.W.L. standard I wouldn't mind at all having to take three more year of school, that's four less than I'd originally anticipated."

"With the rate you're going through these books, you're more than capable of getting to fifth-year standards. Probably N.E.W.T., actually, with a brain and power like yours," Sirius said. Maia smiled, pleased. "I could talk to Professor Dumbledore about going into O.W.L. year when you start at Hogwarts. He'll have final say, of course. And Minerva McGonagall won't just let you flounce into her O.W.L. class without proving you've studied the coursework from previous years."

"So you think asking for tuition from her would be a good idea?" Maia asked.

"Yes. Don't mention the Strip-o-Gram and you'll probably have a shot at convincing her," Sirius said, and Maia chuckled.

"I'd like to…get homework assignments, too," Maia said, sighing softly; Sirius goggled at her. "What! There's no good memorising the contents of a textbook if I can't put into context what I've learned. Like Remus said, there's no point doing something if it's going to be improperly. Anyway, homework assignments will allow me to expand my knowledge on the subject." Sirius checked the time.

"Your lesson's at an end," he grinned, glancing back at Maia. "No homework today, class."

Maia rolled her eyes, smiling.

"Are you going to work on your _extracurricular _projects?" Sirius asked. Every night, Maia set aside time for her sewing, now on the last few of the sundresses she had designed from the new fabric from Gladrag's. She also was working on knitting and sewing several blankets and quilts for Kreacher—luckily he was half her height, therefore the blankets only had to be half the usual size she made, which meant they were much quicker to make up.

She had also been working on those cosmetics she had wanted to create, working from her potions textbooks and the book on cosmetics she had bought in _Flourish and Blotts_. Increasingly the idea of attending Madame Primpernelle's classes on cosmetic-making appealed to her, despite the patchouli.

"I want to write my reply to Hermione's letter, first," Maia said.

"Alright. I'll just go downstairs and have afternoon-tea with my _new_ friend," Sirius said, and Opal beamed as she glanced up, Sirius rising and stretching. "Come on, we'll go and eat all the treats Maia made!" Dropping her crayons (there had been a recipe in one of Maia's potions books to _make_ crayons!), Opal grinned and followed Sirius out of the schoolroom, reaching for his hand. She was a very sweet girl, and Maia sometimes forgot that she went through unimaginable pain every month. And she hadn't even reached puberty.

She found her stationery in her room, and took it downstairs with her to the kitchen, where true enough she found Sirius chatting with an animated Opal, who had a selection of Maia's special petit-fours to herself, her eyes as wide as the saucer they lay upon, utterly delighted.

"Someone's got to stop you two coaxing each other into a sugar-coma," Maia said, at Sirius' inquiring glance, setting her things down on the table. Opal offered her the plate of treats, and Maia smiled as she took one. She licked her fingertips, sank her dip-pen into a little bottle of ink, tapped off the excess, and started to write;

_7 June, 2012_

_Dear Hermione,_

_I was surprised myself to discover that I had an uncle; I had thought my aunt was the last of my relatives. But Professor Dumbledore explained Snuffles' circumstances, and I'm glad I get to live with him. He needs someone to bring him out of his moods; although I don't claim to be solely responsible for this; do you read Ailith Monahan's articles in the _Prophet_? Lovely, isn't she! She's been coming over for dinner quite often._

_Given that Remus is giving me one-to-one Defence lessons whenever he can, I can see why everyone at Hogwarts must miss him! I heard from Snuffles that it's traditional for Defence teachers to last only a year at Hogwarts because of some curse; the way Remus talks about teaching, I know he misses it as much as his students miss him._

_Snuffles and Remus are both giving me lessons in Defence, Charms, Potions and Transfiguration, but the greenhouse is Off Limits because of a Devil's Snare that's gone berserk, so Herbology isn't in the cards! My aunt taught me Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, astronomy and history of magic since early childhood, so I'm not worried about those subjects, but I'm aiming to get caught up to fifth-year level by the end of the summer, so I can sit the O.W.L. examinations next June. But with the rate I'm going through my books, and the other texts I've been studying, I'm studying magic independently, to a higher level. It's not a bad habit, but I probably will confuse myself learning a Protean Charm at the same time as trying to Transfigure voles into bedside-tables! The most difficult spells are the most interesting, though, aren't they!_

_I digress. I apologise. _

_I was put up to GCSE early, taking them just before I turned fourteen, and a few weeks ago I finished my A-Level exams. I'll get my results shortly before my sixteenth birthday, in August._

_And, I can honestly say, the experience at Muggle school definitely will not be wasted on me; I'm working on a project to combine Muggle and wizard history-books, and it's helped a lot, being able to see things from a different perspective. I think it will be a really good opportunity for me to use my brains to actually make a difference. Remus says you're in the same vein._

_On the subject of S.P.E.W., I hope the two Sickles don't tear through the envelope on its way to you! I'm still a little uncertain about Owl Post—it's another of the things I'm rather intrigued about; Wizard communication. Not even a Wizarding-equivalent of mobile-phones for emergencies? That's another thing I'd like to look into, but primarily I've been thinking about werewolves—I didn't even know Remus was one, until Padfoot mentioned it the day of the full-moon; I spent the day in the kitchen, preparing a _tonne_ of chocolate treats!_

_Living with Remus, you can't not think about what werewolves suffer through; I've met a five-year-old little girl affected by the bite, and a 23-year-old wizard who has to support both of his parents, who got the bite protecting him: with Remus working on repealing Wizengamot legislation, I've had some ideas for how to practically help werewolves: a primary-school for werewolves, taught __by__ werewolves, the free distribution of Wolfsbane Potion, as well as hot meals the day after the transformation; a childcare service for werewolves who might have unaffected children; and a clothing drive, to collect old robes and alter them, to distribute amongst werewolves who can't afford new clothes but are in sore need of them._

_That being said, you asked me about my ideas for house-elves. I read your pamphlet, and hope you don't mind that I picked it apart and annotated it! I think the first thing to do with house-elves would be to raise awareness about them. Who ever really sees them? Aside from Kreacher, I've only ever seen one, shopping for food at the market in Diagon Alley. I think house-elves are treated much like domestic servants of the previous century in Muggle homes; neither seen nor heard, but treated terribly. I think S.P.E.W. should take another look at how the word is spread about the way house-elves are treated; on a wider scale, perhaps getting an article on S.P.E.W. in the _Prophet _or even _Witch Weekly_._

_Another huge issue I think is, tied in with house-elves' virtual invisibility; we don't know the full scale of elf-enslavement. And, taking Kreacher as an example, we don't know how many other house-elves have been left abandoned, unnoticed, by the deaths of their masters. I think the biggest thing S.P.E.W. should do, one of the primary concerns, is conduct a nationwide census of all house-elves living in the British Isles. If house-elves are all accounted for, it will be more difficult for wizards to get away with mistreating them, and means there won't be more house-elves like Kreacher, who were completely isolated. A census would also impress on people just how widespread elf-slavery is._

_If there are more house-elves like Dobby, it might be in the interests of S.P.E.W. to collect their testimonies, how they were mistreated, why they were 'freed'. This will also contribute to holding such wizards culpable for their actions toward the elves. I think this would be incredibly useful for S.P.E.W., if house-elves' stories can be used to spread awareness. And a census would also allow us access to wizards' homes to undertake an investigation into the state in which house-elves live, and can allow S.P.E.W. to set a standard, hopefully backed by Wizengamot legislation, about the standard of living expected for house-elves._

_Tied in with the census I proposed, and because of it, I think it would be very beneficial, not to S.P.E.W., but to house-elves, that the Society start a programme that helps re-home them. Not enslaving them to another family, but making sure that they can find work should they find themselves sacked or, like Kreacher, abandoned. Key to this programme would be a rigorous application process for wizarding families who seek domestic help. Since you're a Muggle, you'll know about Social Services; so you'll understand what I mean when I say this programme could operate in a similar capacity, first researching the individual seeking a house-elf to work for them, and S.P.E.W. making regular checkups with the family once the house-elf has agreed to work for them._

_I think that process would go a long way in changing peoples' attitudes towards house-elves; they're not slaves, and should be treated equally. I think the key aim of S.P.E.W. should be to change public opinion on the place of house-elves in Wizarding society; this will help with both the short- and long-term aims._

_Thinking back on what I said about finding freed house-elves paid work, I wonder where they live, when they have been dismissed. I know Kreacher has lived here since before Snuffles was born, and living in such isolation for such a long time, I find it difficult to believe he would have any contacts who would take him in, if he were freed. Perhaps it might be in the house-elves' interests for the Society to open up a halfway-home where freed house-elves can find their feet—and possibly a permanent home where house-elves too old to work can live, with hospital facilities to treat abused elves. They should have somewhere safe where they can come, when they've punished themselves severely and need treatment. _

_The hospital could even be run by house-elves like Dobby, who want to earn a wage. It might also be a point to discover whether house-elf physiology can be studied, the better to understand their medical needs, should S.P.E.W. open such a hospital; house-elf physiology is completely different from humans', so they might react differently to our medicinal potions._

_However, long-term aims should be put into perspective: I think if the Society is to try and change wizards' perspectives on elf-slavery, we must first research how and why it was that wizards first bound elves to them (or the other way around; see, this is an issue we need to study) and understanding the context of that first era of enslavement will go a long way to discrediting the continuation of elf-slavery. _

_And, for the time being, at least, and under the present Ministry, I think the possibility of getting an elf into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures as a liaison is far more likely than reversing the laws on non-wand use. It's the first step._

_I've been discussing all of this with Amos Diggory. I think, after discovering his son's favourite teacher was a werewolf, a werewolf he dines with nearly every day and got his son an Outstanding in O.W.L. Defence! I think he's inclined to change his views on a number of subjects._

_Mr Diggory says that to reverse legislation, one must seek endorsement for bills with members of the Wizengamot—the more senior and powerful, the better; I've been introduced to Professor Griselda Marchbanks, the head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority, and Tiberius Ogden, both of whom are senior members of the Wizengamot, who listened to what I had to say on elf-treatment and the census I proposed above; Madam Marchbanks, who is ANCIENT, tested Professor Dumbledore during _his_ N.E.W.T. exams, has two house-elves taking care of her, and she would be glad to have them interviewed for the census, so she knows that, when she's gone they'll still be looked after._

_I haven't yet seen Professor Dumbledore this week, but if I can get a moment with him I'll ask about putting the Hogwarts house-elves in the census. I can't imagine he'd object, but it's strange; I couldn't find any evidence in _Hogwarts: A History_ that house-elves live and work in the school at all, but Remus told me that Hogwarts hosts the largest number of house-elves of any dwelling in Britain, about a hundred._

_I'll ask Remus and Mr Diggory about the process for getting a magical creature represented with a liaison in the Dept. for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures; mostly Mr Diggory and I have been talking about house-elves; I gave him a copy of your manifesto to read through, and he seemed very interested._

_Especially when Snuffles mentioned that the two of us combined would be more than enough power to completely eradicate corruption from the Ministry, so he'd do best to get behind us or get out of our way quick-like!_

_You asked about Kreacher: when I first arrived to live with Snuffles, I woke up in the middle of the night with him looming over me in the dark! Since you're Muggle-born, you'll perhaps understand the Gollum reference, but he frightened the life out of me! Kreacher has been alone for ten years, since Snuffles' mother died, and with Snuffles being heir to the property, Wizarding laws including Kreacher as part of that 'property', I'm not sure whether Kreacher could leave it without permission. Whether he could or not, I don't think he has, in ten years, so he's been completely alone. The house was in a complete state when I moved in, only a few days after Snuffles and Professor Dumbledore secured it; I don't think Kreacher had cleaned for the ten years he's been alone. Kreacher slept in a nest he'd made with incredibly dirty blankets underneath the boiler in the boiler-room off the kitchen._

_Which is a point. I took a photograph of what Kreacher's "nest" looked like, before he cleaned himself up. You know those ads on the television, trying to get you to donate money to malnourished children in Africa? The ads that break your heart?_

_What if S.P.E.W. put an advertisement in _Witch Weekly_, using the photograph of Kreacher's "nest"—I wonder if there are any house-elves who've had to punish themselves so brutally they're scarred…we could do a lot with that, playing on people's emotions to garner their attention._

_I've since put together a proper bedroom for Kreacher, and made a deal; I cook, he continues to clean the upper-storeys of the house, and I make sure to bring Fudge Flies back from Diagon Alley for him._

_You might be receiving a letter from Madam Marchbanks about joining S.P.E.W., she was so interested in the census to take care of her house-elves._

_It might be an idea for you to visit Dobby and Winky, if you can manage it before term ends. Since Dobby's a free elf, Kreacher says he can be summoned by any wizard who calls him, so perhaps we could meet him during the summer? If he's come from an abusive family, he might be interested in the hospital proposal._

_I'll enclose the literature Mr Diggory gave me on legislation regarding house-elves. Try not to tear it up in a rage; I had difficulty doing so. But you will see my annotations all over it. *(The _Geminio_ charm is wonderful for making copies!)_

_And now, to address the notes you were forced to add to the end of your letter:_

_a. Please assure Harry that Snuffles intends to abscond with him at the earliest opportunity. We've got a room all decorated for him. I hope he likes red and gold! And Snuffles coming in and bouncing on his bed to wake him up of a morning when he's been up all night eating Levitating Sherbet Balls and listening to the Small Faces!_

_b. Bill says to tell Ron, he'll find out soon enough._

_c. Please tell Fred and George (this is from Maia) that I absolutely cannot wait to meet them; Mrs Weasley seems highly concerned about our eventual meeting, as, in her words, she's worried we'll get on like a house on fire._

_d. I think Snuffles is missing Crookshanks too, though now that he's got Opal tailing around after him everywhere (she's the 5-year-old were-girl who is right now trying to STEAL my petit-fours) he's at least kept entertained while we're were-sitting._

_I look forward to your reply, and hope it won't be too long before we can meet._

_Just a quick note I just thought up: It might be in our interests to think of alternative sources of fundraising for S.P.E.W., if direct funds from incoming members are thin on the ground. I'll give it some thought._

_Sincerely,_

_Maia_

"Finished the novel?" Sirius asked, grinning.

"Yep," Maia said happily, stretching her fingers as she reached for her stick of wax and her seal. She neatly folded the stack of stationery she had filled with her writing, curled them around the folded copy of the legislation Mr Diggory had given her, and tucked it all into the envelope, which she addressed, _To Miss Hermione Granger, Gryffindor Tower, Hogwarts_.

"Er…" Pigwidgeon, who was still with them, began to twitter excitably and zoom around and around her head, thrilled at the idea of a delivery. She glanced at Borgia, who gave her a dignified look, and stuck out his leg. Thinking the letter, with its hefty load and the two Sickles she had tucked carefully into a tiny magically-sealed envelope, would be far too heavy for little Pig, she attached the letter to Borgia's leg. Glancing around for Pigwidgeon, she managed to snatch him out of midair; Sirius gave her a look.

"What?"

"Good reflexes."

"Oh. Rounders," Maia said, shrugging; she had been on the school-team. As well as field-hockey. She held Pig up to eye-level. He blinked.

"You go with Borgia, alright?" she said. "The letter's a bit too heavy for you to carry." She released Pig, who fluttered into the air, hooted somewhat sadly, but he perked up when she gave him an owl treat, and opened the kitchen-window. Borgia spread his great wings, and Pig twittered excitedly as he flapped his tiny ones, flying through the window. Borgia gave her an enigmatic look, nipped her finger gently, and soared after his flight-companion.

Maia managed to catch Professor Dumbledore later that day; he arrived earlier than usual for a meeting. She provided him with tea and the dainty scalloped three-tier cake-stand filled with petit-fours she had made (and used magic to increase in number) and he sat humming complacently to himself, seemingly taking delight in the sweet treats and a fine bone-china cup of Darjeeling.

"Um…Professor Dumbledore?" Maia said tentatively. He looked up, smiling invitingly. Maia sighed softly and sank into her seat, glancing into his eyes. "I'd like to ask two favours."

"Please do," Professor Dumbledore smiled.

"You probably know Sirius and Remus have been guiding me through some of the early-stage textbooks for the core subjects at Hogwarts?"

"I am aware of your independent studies, yes," Professor Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling. "Remarkable progress you're making, if I may say so. What _Standard Spells_ book are you on now?"

"Er…Grade Five," Maia said, and Professor Dumbledore nodded.

"After two weeks…" He chuckled softly.

"Well, I'd memorised my mother's books, and…we've been using a lot of spells cleaning and redecorating the house, and in the kitchen and the allotment. The thing is, I'm only learning the spells. Not really anything _about_ them," Maia said. "I can _do_ all of the spells, of course, but without proper instruction and assignments, I know I'm not getting the most out of it. I've read all of Sirius' old notes, but they're, uh…" She laughed. "Not exactly _complete_."

"No," Professor Dumbledore chuckled again.

"Sirius mentioned that several of the Hogwarts professors are also members of the new Order," she said. "So they'd be coming to Grimmauld Place over the summer."

"Indeed."

"Well, I was wondering whether you think any of the professors would agree, or have time for some one-on-one tutoring," Maia asked, glancing at Professor Dumbledore. "I would pay for their tuition, but I'm hopeful that I can make up for as much lost time as I can over the summer."

"Ah, I see," Professor Dumbledore nodded.

"I know the professors will be busy with the Order, and with their own plans for the summer," Maia said, glancing at Professor Dumbledore. "I'd considered asking Madam Marchbanks what she would suggest I do. I'd just rather not waste my time; I know I'll be hopelessly bored sitting through first-year classes."

Professor Dumbledore's eyes were twinkling, and he smiled. "Indeed, I believe you would be. And with your penchant for _Gambol & Jape's_ products, and the investigative potions Sirius mentioned you have been brewing, I worry you would channel your uncle's mischievousness as a coping-mechanism. Exceptional brains like ours are too precious to let squander. I shall talk to Minerva, and Pomona and Filius, perhaps Severus would be amenable to examining your progress in Potions."

"Thank you!" Maia gasped, relieved and delighted.

"And what was the second thing you wished to enquire of me?" Professor Dumbledore asked. Maia took a breath, and told him about S.P.E.W., exchanging letters with Hermione Granger, and her ideas for a nationwide house-elf census and a hospital for house-elves.

"A _census_," Professor Dumbledore said, nodding slowly, eyes on the annotated S.P.E.W. pamphlet Maia had handed him.

"Yes. To try and help prevent elves being abused, or neglected like Kreacher," Maia said. "Madam Marchbanks said S.P.E.W. could interview her two house-elves for the census, so she knows someone will take care of them when she's gone, which is why I thought of the census, because of Kreacher. Not that any house-elf could go unnoticed at Hogwarts, with the sheer number of them, but if Hermione agrees to the idea, I'd like to ask permission on behalf of S.P.E.W. to interview all of the Hogwarts house-elves. I think charting their family-trees would help discover their connections outside Hogwarts and through them, discover more house-elves, and I'd like to hear their thoughts on a hospital for abused or elderly house-elves, possibly run by house-elves, under the legal protection of S.P.E.W., at least until we can overturn legislation against elves. I also want to start researching elf-enslavement, and possibly elf-physiology, for elf-Healers. I should probably ask Kreacher and the Hogwarts elves how they treat illnesses, what ailments actually afflict them. Other than self-imposed injuries."

"Do you have notepaper and a quill?" Professor Dumbledore asked politely; Maia got them, and she watched Professor Dumbledore write seamlessly, constructing a long list of publications, with their authors and the edition number. "I would start with these books and essays."

"Thank you!" Maia said, raising her eyebrows as she took the notepaper, which was neatly filled with the titles of books, essays and academic articles and printed correspondences.

"And I absolutely give S.P.E.W. permission to question the Hogwarts house-elves," Professor Dumbledore said, his eyes glinting. He smiled at her as if…as if _pleased_, as if he had expected her to do something, and she hadn't disappointed.

"Excellent," Maia smiled.

"And I shall bring the matter up to Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, Snape and Sprout about your summertime tuition," Professor Dumbledore smiled, indicating his head slightly. Maia nodded, not entirely certain Sirius would appreciate his childhood nemesis lingering around Grimmauld Place, even to teach her.

"Thank you," she said again, smiling. She glanced up as a large group of Order members made their way into the kitchen. "Better get the glasses out!"

When Maia and Opal were asked to wait upstairs while the meeting went on, Maia retreated to the second-storey gallery with Opal; she had found a small rocking-chair, in which Opal now would sit, frowning in concentration as she used a pair of knitting-needles (pretty ones of Maia's, with pink polka-dot tops) to construct squares of knitting that Maia told her she would sew together for a blanket when she had enough. Spike hummed on top of her head, and Maia sat smiling as she worked on the next set of robes she had just finished altering to current styles.

Professor Dumbledore had even brought some of his old robes; he had teased and asked whether anyone had brought any old socks, as no one ever thought he seemed to need them, "they always insist on sending me books for Christmas".

As she sewed, and kept an eye on Opal, who tended to like Maia's records, and would sit humming along quite complacently, gazing in concentration at her knitting, Maia wondered how to further spread the word about collections of old robes for werewolves.

Maia met Christian Lovett's parents that evening at dinner; he had asked them to join the Order, as a previous Head of the International Office of Magical Law, and an ex-Unspeakable and member of the Wizengamot; their knowledge of the system would undoubtedly provide Remus phenomenal support with what he was attempting to do.

Mr and Mrs Lovett were surprised at how young Maia was. Wanting to get involved in what Maia was doing, Mrs Lovett went away after dinner with a trunk of robes she was going to alter, and she was going to come over the following day, to sort through all of the robes and organise them, and also to talk to Maia about S.P.E.W.; Maia thought talking to someone who admitted herself had "unlimited leisure-time" about the legal aspects of S.P.E.W. was smart, and Mrs Lovett gave her advice on how to start writing up a thoroughly professional manifesto incorporating the proposal for a house-elf census backed up by Wizengamot legislation; Mrs Lovett said her husband was the person to go to for that. He and Remus had fallen into immediate discussion, Mr Lovett having spent just over the last decade studying everything there was to know about werewolf legislation, planning how to eradicate it.

Again, Sirius had offered to kill Dolores Umbridge, the Ministry witch responsible for the latest and worst bout of legislation against werewolves.

Mr Lovett was tempted.

* * *

><p>The day Hogwarts broke up for the summer holidays, Maia was sent to Diagon Alley and the Hobbit-hole to retrieve enough food that could be prepared into a suitably fine feast fit for the homeward-bound Champion of the Triwizard Tournament, and Mrs Longbottom's grandson Neville.<p>

It was in doing so that Maia stumbled upon the Wizarding-equipment shop _Dervish and Banges_, quite by accident. Among the wirelesses and the Sneakoscopes and spindly silver instruments and strange twelve-handed clocks, Maia discovered a set of very handsome wireless broadcasting equipment.

Of highly-polished mahogany, deep and rich, the colour of finest whisky, the apparatus was about twenty inches long, twelve deep, and six high: several circular indentations were carved neatly into the top, and on the front were a series of switches and dials. The microphone was old-fashioned in appearance but very high-quality, and levitated anywhere the proprietor moved it when he showed Maia the equipment. Another deck included two record-players side by side, with gold switches and narrow gold arms and a set of replacement needles.

The proprietor said he rarely sold wireless-broadcasting equipment to private individuals; usually it was the _Wizarding Wireless Network_ buying the newest models. He had to explain what the shelf of 1.5-inch glass balls were: they worked, as Maia understood it, much like sound-recording devices, only instead of records, which had limited recording-time, the balls could be used to record anything for as long as they wanted, and the curved indentations on top of the larger deck were the place on which they were set to replay the recording. He said the _WWN_ used them to record jingles, advertisements and introductions to different presenters, and also to record particular broadcasts and live performances.

Several sets of speakers were the most curious things Maia had ever seen; the tallest featured a series of clear glass balls, from tiny ones at the very top, to ones the size of footballs at the base, which was made of polished mahogany: several of the smaller ones stood nearly a foot high, three squat glass balls on top of each other, larger at the bottom, the top two angled back. Maia asked to be given a demonstration of each set's sound-quality, and went to the record-shop across the Alley, returning with a borrowed _Flying Horklump Brigade_ album (because she knew the quality of their recordings was pitch-perfect).

She was blown away.

The proprietor said that any headphones could be synchronised to the broadcast with a particular spell, so the presenter could listen to their own voice for any adjustments they needed to make to the sound quality. She asked how she would start broadcasting; the proprietor said, "Turn the equipment on, find an unused channel, and start gabbing". Maia asked for some more information on the model, and the price, and when the proprietor scribbled down the price on the back of the leaflet, she frowned at it, thinking deeply.

And then she blurted, "I'll take it." Using the method Sirius had showed her, Maia transferred the gold from her family's vault to the shop. He neatly boxed everything, with full instruction manuals, two large handfuls of free glass recording balls, and two of the smaller speakers to go alongside the large ones Maia had bought for Sirius' record-player.

She half-ran all the way home, grinning, too excited to wander and lap up the sunshine.

She had been at Number Twelve barely over a fortnight; but she could tell Sirius was getting more and more agitated, the captivity inside Number Twelve nearly as corrosive as in Azkaban. He was happy to be with Remus again; glad that so many people visited Number Twelve and furthermore, that so many people knew he was innocent; he stopped feeling useless when he was teaching Maia, and kept entertained by precocious, lively Opal; he was also thoroughly well-fed, with Maia enforcing his twelve-meals-a-day diet, and frequent trips to the seaside by her Hobbit-hole and near-daily walks to Diagon Alley were doing him good.

But he was bitter about being so 'useless' to the Order. Even if they weren't militant, he said, he still couldn't just sit on his arse doing nothing. He helped Remus as much as possible, and it wasn't unusual to see the two of them working until late at night in the study, sharing a desk, Maia having to light extra lamps because their eyes were straining. But he still continued to feel trapped and inadequate.

When he fell into his moods, Maia would find Sirius going over old photographs of the Marauders. She had suggested writing the stories of his adolescence down, and Sirius had started… But she could tell, even without the Dementors' influence, Sirius was missing his best-friend. And a little part of her suspected he thought he could get Prongs back if he spent more time with Harry. Something he sighed over, and admitted he did see so much of James in his son, mostly because he wished to; Harry had James' stubbornness and conviction, but Sirius confessed that Harry was, deep at heart, his mother's son.

Maia told him he should try not to dwell on the past so much. He had had twelve years' worth of that, completely uninterrupted, and he still felt the effects of the Dementors, she knew. Sometimes she would hear him walking about upstairs in the middle of the night, unable to sleep due to dreams, bad memories that had become his nightmares.

When she reached Grimmauld Place, she was sufficiently busy preparing lunch that she got away with not chatting away with Sirius; he was busy himself, making sure the room they had set aside for Cedric and Neville to share was sufficiently made up for their arrival, Bulbadox Powder sprinkled on the sheets, the mirror that snickered insults on the wall.

Around one o'clock, just as she was setting a large spread of lemon-lavender honey roasted chicken on the dining-room table with pitchers of icy drinks, Kreacher admitted several Order members into the house. Walking out into the hall, Sirius had tugged the handkerchief away from his mouth and nose, stripping off a pair of dragon-hide gloves as he exited the library, in which he had been in the process of stripping a third bookcase (two being stripped completely, half their contents binned and half given over to a restorer) and grinned as he shook hands with two rather eccentric-looking witches and a wizard.

The first witch was very tall, with black hair pulled into a severe bun, and no-nonsense square spectacles perched on her nose. From everything Maia had heard of her, she guessed instantly that this was the strict Professor McGonagall. The second witch had flyaway hair, and there was a vast quantity of earth under her fingernails and on her robes; this must be Professor Sprout. And the wizard was the tiniest person Maia had ever met; Professor Flitwick.

Maia was introduced to them all, and she took their cloaks and hung them up, before ushering them into the dining-room. Mrs Weasley and Mrs Lovett also showed up at Number Twelve, depositing altered robes upstairs, and they all sat in the dining-room, the windows thrown open, eating happily.

"I'm onto the _Intermediate Guide to Transfiguration_," Maia was saying to Professor McGonagall, whom she sat next to. "But there are some things I haven't been able to study."

"Did you make a note of the spells you didn't cover?" Professor McGonagall asked.

"I did. I put bookmarks on the pages so I could go back," Maia nodded, handing Professor Flitwick one of the bowls of salads she had prepared alongside the fresh, summery chicken. "What I'd really like is to have assignments that will allow me to research further, but I think Sirius has a moral objection to homework."

"Yes," Professor McGonagall said, casting Sirius an amused glance.

"Oh!" Sirius blurted, sitting up a little straighter. "I wanted to ask you, Pomona—would you mind taking a look at the greenhouse?" He glanced at Professor Sprout, whose eyebrows rose inquisitively. "There's a good amount of Devil's Snare in there. Kreacher hadn't cleaned anything for a decade; perfect growing-conditions, I'd expect."

"Oh dear," Professor Sprout tutted. "Surprised the whole house isn't overgrown! Yes, I'll take a look at it after you catch us up, Sirius."

Maia was _banished_ from the dining-room once lunch was over, completed by individual meringue tartlets with a Fiawsberry Pear curd filling, sharp and sweet, wonderfully refreshing; Kreacher helped her carry the dishes and plates downstairs, where he started to wash them with magic. While Kreacher returned to the library, continuing Sirius' process of reading book-titles and binning them, depending on how Dark they were, Maia went upstairs in search of an appropriate place to set up.

The most ideal place would be the playroom; it was huge, an open space, and the raised platform could be fortified with Silencing Charms or something of the sort to prevent noise from the rest of the house from interfering; but now were-sitting Opal, the playroom was an integral part of keeping her entertained. The next choice was two large boudoirs on the first-storey, one of which was a completely internal room, no doors onto the corridor, but adjoined by a set of large double-doors at the back end, one door at the front-end of the room leading to the new music-room. The rooms were warm and full of sunlight, and as yet had very little furniture or decoration. She could turn part of the larger room into a studio, enclosing it as a windowed room within the room by magic; the internal room could be turn into a music library.

She went to her room, and sat doing several watercolours of what the rooms could look like, using Sirius' old furniture to create a sort of den looking into the studio.

Professors Flitwick and McGonagall had already left by the time Maia came downstairs, which annoyed her; but Professor Sprout had remained, Sirius showing her the greenhouse. Maia hadn't yet looked inside.

"Wow," she said, gaping in horror.

"Mm. It's not so much a _green_house as a grubby brown, grime-infested…house for murderous fungi and throttle-happy green tentacle-plants," Sirius said, staring into the greenhouse with a grimace, arms folded over his chest.

She glanced at Maia. "You'll help, of course, as part of your first lessons?" Maia glanced at Sirius, who gave her a lazy smile.

"Professors McGonagall and Flitwick are going to discuss lessons with you after tonight's meeting," he said.

"Why did they leave so quickly?" Maia asked.

"Want to get a head-start on reaching their contacts," Sirius said, with a heavy sigh, looking miserable. "I told them about you wanting summer tuition. McGonagall thought it was a good idea; she's very strict about her subject. Doesn't like people messing around with Transfiguration."

"Does 'messing around' include learning to become an unregistered Animagus?" Maia asked innocently, and Sirius grinned.

"Actually, I think she was rather impressed," he smirked. "We did it when we were sixteen. Most of our class were having trouble changing the colour of their eyebrows. So what do we need, Pomona?" he asked Professor Sprout.

"A pick-axe," Professor Sprout said, her illuminated wand held aloft as she gazed around the greenhouse inscrutably. "A shovel, a fork, and a good amount of dragon-dung fertiliser."

"I don't know about the fertiliser," Sirius smirked, amused, at Maia's expression—_Dragon-dung fertiliser_?!—"But I'm sure Maia has everything else at her Hobbit-hole."

"Oh, don't worry," Professor Sprout said happily, flicking her wand, and several gardening-forks, spades and a pick-axe appeared. "Best get this cleared up now, or it'll be a hazard to the foundations of the house. I'll want to take a cutting, though. And some of these exotic fungi are the finest specimens I've seen in a while." And out of the pockets of her robes she pulled a knife, a little trowel and several small terracotta pots.

"I'll go and put the kettle on," Maia said, and Professor Sprout nodded, hefting the pick-axe into her hands, eyeing several tentacle-like creepers shrewdly.

Helping Professor Sprout, they chatted about Maia's vegetable-patch and orchards at the Hobbit-hole; Professor Sprout said if she was gifted with normal things, she would have little trouble with a magical garden. Maia told her the only reason she hadn't attempted to clean out the greenhouse was because Sirius had banned her from entry after seeing the Devil's Snare.

"Well, I am very glad seven years of Herbology study left at least a small imprint on Sirius' memory," Professor Sprout chuckled. When he had finished with another bookcase in the library, Kreacher came to help; Professor Sprout, used to the help of the Hogwarts house-elves with the kitchen gardens, knew a little about their branch of magic, and let Kreacher get to it as he helped strip flowerbeds and dig them up. As they cleared away pots of plants, strange flowers glowing luminously in the gloom, fungi pulsating sickeningly, Professor Sprout gave Maia her first practical Herbology lesson. She said Sirius had asked about some summer tutoring for Maia, which Professor Sprout was more than happy to give; especially if Maia would pay her in jars of fresh honey and gooseberry jam.

As it was, Professor Sprout a good amount of her summer tending the Hogwarts greenhouses, which came into their prime during high-summer, especially, she anticipated, this year, due to the anticipated heat-wave, and with Neville Longbottom coming to live with her, Professor Sprout offered Maia free tuition, in exchange for her spending one day a week helping her tend the Hogwarts greenhouses.

Professor Flitwick had heard how well Maia was getting on with her independent studies, and said there was little need to pay for further tuition; he would see her at the end of August to test her on what she had learned, and decide whether she could go into fifth-year O.W.L. year. However, he did give Sirius a list of course tests and essay-titles he gave his students from first to fourth year for Maia to work on throughout the summer, and if she wanted to send them to him, he would mark them for her.

Maia helped Professor Sprout salvage whatever they could from the greenhouse; not the Devil's Snare, which Professor Sprout gave Maia a lecture on, as well as some of the rarer fungi, and the flowers that had seemingly thrived when left to their own devices, of which Professor Sprout took cuttings.

Otherwise, they stripped the greenhouse bare, and Kreacher had the glass absolutely _blinding_ with cleanliness in the intense sunshine. Maia and Professor Sprout turned the soil, mixing it with dragon-dung fertiliser.

It was interesting to learn about the things that had grown in the greenhouse; they weren't all poisonous, as Professor Sprout demonstrated by popping a little vivid-fuchsia button-mushroom in her mouth; Maia tried one too, they tasted of the sweetest, tartest raspberries combined with the syrupy taste of poached strawberries and rhubarb. Absolutely delicious, and it got Maia thinking about what magical plants and fungi could be used for cooking. Mrs Weasley was of course the person to take the subject up with.

Professor Sprout did in fact give Maia homework; using _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ and any other books she could source on Herbology, Maia was to design her dream garden, featuring the magical plants and flowers she had already and was going to study with Professor Sprout: this was the coursework project Professor Sprout assigned in fifth-year, overarching their other studies, to review previous years' work.

"You'll be working on it continuously alongside other homework assignments; plan your _dream garden_," Professor Sprout said, as Maia perched her journal on an upturned terracotta pot. "And when I say plan, I mean planting schedules; detailed plans of flowerbed arrangements; evidence of a thorough understanding of how arranging particular plants around each other will either help or hinder their growth; detail given to _why_ specific plants and flowers will be planted, and which types of compost, feed and repellents—in the form of potions, wildlife, and other plants that serve to ward off particular pests—will be used. Though the ornamental plants and flowers are, of course, entirely down to personal choice, and you needn't justify their presence."

"I'll be bringing plants to our lessons for you to study, and I'd recommend bringing coloured pencils and such for detailed drawings on phytotomy—plant anatomy, that is. You'll be submitting those pieces of work for marks, too. Or you would, if we were at Hogwarts. I'll just keep track of your progress through the course-load, see where we can get to. So, alongside that big assignment, you'll be submitting homework with detailed drawings and descriptions of the plants, their properties and uses, and I'll throw in a few essays to give you a chance to further your research… Have you ever been in a magical greenhouse before?" Professor Sprout asked.

"I have," Maia nodded. "Well, it wasn't a greenhouse, but my aunt had a friend in Jerusalem who was a famous Herbologist out there."

"Jerusalem!" Professor Sprout exclaimed, eyebrows rising as she grinned. "Might be worth having a chat with them; the Middle-East is famed for its magical plants."

"I think they were published," Maia said thoughtfully. "Loads of people had written essays and articles on the gardens, but I think he had written books, too." She made a note in her journal to send a letter to her aunt's friend. He had showed her the most wonderful flowers and plants when they had visited. But her aunt had taught her Hebrew and Arabic before they had visited; he spoke no English, "so I don't suppose Flourish and Blotts would have his publications…"

Professor Sprout left Number Twelve bearing pots of cuttings, leaving the greenhouse sparkling clean and nearly completely cleared; only about a dozen pots remained, having potted some cuttings from a handful of plants and fungi. She also left Maia with some of her first assignments, hearing that Maia liked to visit Diagon Alley nearly every day; she was to source several magical plants, bulbs and fungi from the market or the Herbology shop, and make a study of each, researching their properties and varying uses.

With the list of essay-titles Professor Flitwick had given Sirius for Maia to work her way through, she had more than enough to start on, which pleased her. Being inactive was telling on her just as much as it was on Sirius, who started fidgeting the nearer they got to five o'clock, when the Hogwarts Express was set to arrive in King's Cross.

A group of Order members assembled at Number Twelve shortly before they were all due to head to King's Cross: Maia heard they wanted to escort Neville and Cedric back to Headquarters; but also to warn Harry Potter's abusive, neglectful Muggle family about treating him properly. Sirius was grumpy that he couldn't go too, because he had to stay behind to usher members inside for the meeting.

The professors returned, Flitwick with a stack of papers, each piece filled with essay-titles neatly arranged by year, a collection covered front and back with reference material he suggested for further-reading. Professor Sprout looked happy, as Maia supplied her with iced elderflower-cordial, humming excitedly that she had re-potted the cuttings she had taken from the greenhouse, and they were already getting along very well in her own greenhouse. Professor McGonagall, who came bearing O.W.L. practice-exams for Maia to work her way through, arrived with Griselda Marchbanks, who accepted a glass of Maia's plum brandy, and Maia watched on curiously as Madam Rosmerta mixed drinks for everyone.

"A small gillywater," she said, handing it to Professor McGonagall, and handing a glass to Professor Flitwick, "and a cherry syrup and soda with ice."

"Thank you!" Professor Flitwick said, smacking his lips as he glanced at the drink. Maia glanced at Madam Rosmerta.

"You might have to give me a cocktail-mixing class," she said, and Madam Rosmerta chuckled as Maia handed her a glass of cider. She chatted with Madam Rosmerta about what 'gillywater' was, and the various liqueurs wizards preferred to Muggle alcohols; by the time the last members had arrived, little Opal had been transferred to Maia's lap while her dad talked earnestly with Tiberius Ogden and she was working on her knitting, Spike humming on top of her head while Maia fed the little Puffskein bits of lemon-curd and listened in on Tonks' discussion with Christian Lovett and Til Hughes about a Battle of the Bands scheduled for the coming month at the _Brass Jobberknoll_, in which the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ had a slot. Sirius was talking with Vittorio and Jack, who had his lyrics journal out, showing it to Sirius; they were discussing the possibility of using the upstairs music-room for rehearsals, as their usual venue had changed hands and the proprietor had trebled the fees, "and we also wanted to borrow Maia."

"What for?" Sirius asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Ales suggested asking her about art for the new record-sleeve," Jack said.

"Well, you'll have to ask her," Sirius grinned slightly, glancing over at Maia, who was focusing on feeding Spike a pink-raspberry from the end of her finger, trying to figure out where its mouth was. "What've you written already?"

Lothaire and Mad-Eye were arguing with Kingsley about someone named Scrimgeour; Maia levitated a copper pot from the side to whack Dung Fletcher over the head (to Opal's giggling amusement) when he started to smoke up his pipe; Hestia Jones and Sturgis Podmore were chatting with Elphias Doge, and Mrs Lovett was deep in discussion with Madam Bones, and by the time the cluster of wizards who had gone to King's Cross returned, only Mr and Mrs Weasley were missing from the kitchen; Remus arrived with a fat envelope for Maia, and as soon as he opened a wicker-basket, a very large ginger cat sprang from it, leaping into Sirius's lap, where it curled up, purring deeply; Sirius grinned, scratching the cat behind the ears.

"Hermione's parents are taking her to France for two weeks," Remus said, in explanation. "Molly and I discussed it with Mr and Mrs Granger; when they get back, Hermione will come here. But I said we could take care of Crookshanks in the meantime."

"Hullo, Crookshanks," he said, and the cat preened luxuriously as Sirius scratched him, stroking his ears and back.

"It's a mini-tiger!" Opal cried, staring aghast at the cat. "Don't let him eat Spike!"

"He won't," Sirius assured her, smiling, and Maia reached down to scratch Crookshanks' ears. He gave her an imperious look, then purred deeply and nuzzled her hand, pawing his way up Sirius' chest to try and climb into her arms.

"Here, why don't you take him?" Sirius said, passing Crookshanks over to Maia. "The meeting's about to start. You two can head upstairs. I think Augusta and Amos are in the hall." Maia nodded; Crookshanks curled up in her arms, purring, and Opal tottered up the stairs in front of her, Spike still balanced on top of her head. Crookshanks' large, yellow eyes followed the Puffskein.

They met Mr Diggory and Mrs Longbottom at the top of the stairs. "Everything go okay?" Maia asked.

"Yes," Mr Diggory smiled. "Kreacher's showing the boys to their room."

"Excellent. I think you're the last to arrive," Maia said, and Mrs Longbottom drew the door closed behind her, blocking all sound from the kitchen. Opal glanced up at Maia, then followed her upstairs; she followed the sound of male voices, and Kreacher's unmistakable croak, to the second-storey, where the majority of the spare-bedrooms she and Sirius had decorated for younger guests were located. Cedric and Neville had one of the numerous twin rooms, this one with a soft sage-green colour-scheme, and as Maia poked her head inside, she saw Kreacher snap his fingers; the contents of two scuffed trunks at the end of the two twin beds soared to the narrow wardrobes either side of the fireplace, beside two identical chests of drawers. A shaving-stand stood in the corner by the window, and a rack contained freshly-laundered towels for both of the boys. The window-seat was already filling up with potted plants, the sun rich through the window.

A toad was gulping wetly on one of the pillows, and Opal strode into the bedroom without pause, tucking her head down on the pillow to gaze at the toad. Maia rapped her knuckles against the open door, leaning against the doorframe. Two boys, one round-faced and blonde, the other tall, handsome and dark-haired; he was freeing a pretty owl from its cage.

"Hello!" she grinned, as the two boys glanced up. "Getting settled in?"

"Yes," the taller boy said, smiling shyly.

"Excellent. Well, don't take too long; the initiation ceremony will be an hour," Maia said, checking her watch.

"Initiation ceremony?" the blonde boy said, looking a little alarmed.

"Yes. Ritual flogging, streaking around Grimmauld Square, duelling Mad-Eye and downing a bottle of firewhiskey are just some of the tasks," Maia said casually; the round-faced boy's eyes popped, but the taller one chuckled softly.

"I suppose you're Maia," he said, and Maia nodded, offering her hand. "Cedric. Professor Lupin told us about you on the walk over."

"I've been hearing all about you, as well," Maia smiled; she glanced at the other boy, "Both of you. So you must be Neville." Neville shook her hand, flushing softly. "Professor Sprout says you're excellent at Herbology." Neville's chin rose slightly, and he looked a little more confident. "That's good; I'll need you to help me. I'll be studying during the summer, trying to catch up."

"What's your frog's name?" Opal asked, glancing at Neville.

"Uh… His name's Trevor," Neville said, "but he's a toad."

"Hm. Trevor," Opal said thoughtfully, gazing at Trevor, who was gulping wetly.

"Cedric, Neville, this is Opal Ruffio," Maia said, and Opal turned to smile at them. "And the Puffskein is her new pet, called Spike."

"Yep," Opal said happily, as Neville smiled and Cedric chuckled; Crookshanks leapt from Maia's arms onto Cedric's bed, curling up in a patch of sun, looking like he was about to start dozing. She glanced from Cedric to Neville.

"I hope you don't mind sharing," she said, gesturing around the room. "We're expecting an influx of Weasleys next week, so…"

"No, this is great," Cedric smiled. "Dad said you were in charge of cleaning this entire house."

"Yeah, just be properly grateful you didn't have to move in when there was still mould growing in all of the cupboards, and Doxies infesting the curtains," Maia said, shuddering, glancing at Kreacher, who was levitating a pile of school-robes and clothing to be laundered, while clean clothes were folding themselves up in the dressers and hanging themselves up in the wardrobes. "If you need any bookcases or anything, just ask; I've still not finished going through all of the attics. But if you need to do homework, downstairs is a big study." For a moment, there was silence, Trevor gulping softly, Crookshanks stretching out on Cedric's bed, soaking up the sun; Opal brought Spike down from her head, and set the Puffskein next to Crookshanks, who eyed it once more, then reached out and drew Spike closer with his paw, then closed his eyes, dozing.

"So I'm sorry your summer's been railroaded," Maia said, glancing at Cedric. "I know it's probably not your first-choice to stay shut up in this house."

"It's alright; I understand," Cedric said, shrugging slightly. "After what happened, Mum and Dad just want to know I'm gonna be safe while they're at work." Maia nodded.

"It won't be that bad, actually," she said. "We walk to Diagon Alley nearly every day; and Sirius says we can use the Floo Network to get to my home; there's a huge veggie-patch and orchard, so I collect ripe things for cooking, and there's loads of meadow-property that Professor Dumbledore has put safety precautions on, right up to the beach, so you can fly, I think. Remus says you play Quidditch? Anyway, Sirius will go spare if he has to spend every day shut up here, so I thought we could go at least one afternoon a week to the Hobbit-hole. And Bill Weasley says his twin-brothers are more than enough to make this place the heart of a party every day!" Cedric chuckled, and Neville grinned.

"The Weasley twins are great!" he said happily. "They invented Canary Creams—I got Transfigured into a canary when I ate one of the custard-creams they gave me."

"Yeah, Bill warned me against accepting anything edible they offer me," Maia chuckled.

"So…what's going on downstairs?" Cedric asked, glancing at Maia. "My dad said you'd explain."

"Oh. Well, this is Headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix," Maia said, and while Cedric frowned, Neville's eyes widened. "It's the society Professor Dumbledore founded during the War. After what happened to you and Harry, Professor Dumbledore reinstated it; they're working on getting new members, and instead of fighting Voldemort and his Death Eaters, what the Order's more concerned with now is reforming the Ministry from the inside." She had ignored the soft sort of yelp that Neville had managed to turn into a cough, and Cedric's soft inhalation of breath at her mention of the name 'Voldemort'.

"Professor Dumbledore put this house under the Fidelius Charm—only the Secret Keeper can speak its location," Maia added, at Neville's frown. "So it's ideal to keep you safe," she said, glancing at Cedric. "A lot of the stuff the Order are doing involves getting people in high positions in the Ministry onto their side, so they can start repealing legislation that's been passed."

"Like what?"

"Well, for one, Remus, your dad and Mr Lovett are heading the new efforts to repeal werewolf legislation and promote werewolf-rights," Maia said. "Mr Lovett used to be Head of the International Magical Office of Law, before he and his wife were attacked, protecting their son, so they're really useful, know the system inside and out. And Opal's dad is working with them, too."

"Because I'm a werewolf," Opal chirped, glancing up from Crookshanks, whom she had curled up beside, and was stroking his ears. Neville's eyes widened, but he didn't jump away or gape. Cedric looked…stunned, Maia thought. He caught her eye, perhaps stunned to realise the little girl with shining blonde ringlets, wearing a handmade sundress and sparkly glitter jelly-sandals turned into a ravening monster every month.

"Hermione mentioned you're doing a sort of clothing-drive," Cedric said. "Collecting old robes you're altering before passing them on to werewolves who need them."

"That's right," Maia nodded.

"Yeah, Hermione said so, but we didn't reckon there'd be many fifteen-year-old werewolves who wanted Ron's old Chudley Cannons t-shirt," Neville said. "Hermione reminded us all that Professor Lupin was a werewolf, but he was the _best_ teacher we ever had. So I think people might talk to their parents about sending their unused clothes."

"That's excellent!" Maia grinned.

"When we realised that when Hermione said to address parcels to Maia Black, she meant the Maia Black who'd been in the Entertainment section of the _Prophet_ with the Frabjous Chizpurfles," Cedric said, and Maia grinned.

"That was a good night. They've got another gig this week, actually," she said. "They're downstairs." The boys stared at her. "What?" She laughed. "They're all in the Order, minus the drummer, but he's being replaced anyway because he smokes too much pot and never shows up for practices."

"Oh!" Neville exclaimed softly. "Ron Weasley asked me to pass on a message to you." He glanced at Maia.

"Really?"

"Yeah. He said, 'Don't encourage Hermione about _spew_'." Maia grinned.

"I think it's a very good cause," she said honestly. She remembered the fat envelope Remus had passed her. She glanced from Neville to Cedric, to Opal.

"You don't mind doing me a favour, do you?" she asked. Cedric glanced at her curiously. "Sirius is going round the twist with boredom, thinking he's useless being trapped in here. So I figured out a way that can get him to…I don't know, _rehabilitate_, as well as help spread the word. But I need some help setting it up."

"Course," Cedric smiled. Neville nodded. Opal woke from her doze with a snort. Maia grinned, and she ushered them all upstairs.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review. Beyond bringing Cedric and Neville to the house, I'm not quite sure what I want to do with them. I know that Maia's going to help Neville with his confidence and his belief that he can do things… Not sure about Cedric yet.


	14. Chapter 14

**A.N.**: I know it's been a while since I updated; I've been distracted by Four Brothers, Tangled, Gilmore Girls and The O.C., so despite having neglected Maia, I now have a great Gilmore Girls fanfic underway, I've been contemplating how to get back into my _Sun, Stars, Moonlight_ fic, and I updated _Lilium Inter Spinas_. But I now bring you chapter fourteen, so please enjoy, and review!

BTW, the only deaths I ever contemplate in HP fanfics are those of Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange and Wormtail, so nobody worry about me killing off Sirius!

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_14_

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><p>"Whenever the <em>Prophet<em> mentioned Sirius Black in the past, they always made him out to be a Muggle-hater," Cedric said thoughtfully, as he gaped around at the sheer mass of records Sirius owned; his childhood bedroom was still packed with bookcases arranged haphazardly around the room, with the huge console in the centre overloaded with Sirius' _stuff_. "But look at all of this stuff. Muggle magazines, motorcycles…"

"Staggering, isn't it," Maia chuckled softly.

"So what was your idea?" Cedric asked.

"Well, Sirius can't go out and start marshalling up support for the Order, or the reforms they're going to start pushing through," Maia said, "but he told me that when he was a teenager, he wanted to have his own radio-show and cinema. Something about girls… Anyway, I saw _beautiful_ radio-broadcasting equipment in Diagon Alley today, and since I've discovered that the _WWN_ doesn't play rock, and having listened to the quality of the programmes on the _WWN_, I thought the cost of the broadcasting-equipment was more than worth it if it meant people could listen to decent music. Celestina Warbeck is just…" She shivered. Celestina Warbeck was a hundred times worse than Celine Dion. "Anyway, there are two adjoining rooms downstairs, with a door to the music-room; I thought one of them could be turned into a broadcasting-studio, with all of these records being organised in the internal room." She showed Cedric her watercolours; Neville was examining some of the records curiously, trying not to look at the posters of Marliyn Monroe on a bed of rumpled silk.

"I'll need a little help conjuring things and sound-proofing the little studio-room," Maia said. "But I thought we could surprise Sirius." Cedric nodded, smiling.

"Just tell us what you need us to do," he said.

Together, and with Kreacher's help and reference to Cedric's _Guide to Advanced Transfiguration_, Maia set out plans for the adjoining rooms: along the back wall of the first room, they created, with the conjuration of an internal wall with a very large, long window, a broadcasting-studio. While Opal was set in her rocking-chair on the top landing of the second-storey staircase, with Spike in her lap, Crookshanks curled up on her feet, working on her knitting and keeping "a sharp eye" on the gallery below to see whether anyone was on their way upstairs, Neville watched, sitting on the polished wood floor with several small terracotta pots, seeds from packets Maia had bought in Diagon Alley and several seedlings and fully-grown plants, with which she had suggested he could make up some pots to put in the studio to brighten it up; Kreacher showed Cedric and Maia the extent of the unused furniture they had gathered from around the house, and which Kreacher had been emptying, repairing, relining and polishing.

A handsome leather-topped mahogany desk with Louis-style legs was tucked along the wall under the long window looking into the rest of the room, through to the internal room, while a slightly lower three-door cabinet was tucked at the end, perpendicular to it. A bookcase was set against the wall, careful so that the door didn't hit it every time it opened, and along the back wall was arranged a low sideboard-cabinet specifically designed almost like bins, to hold records, with a corner-unit of shelves tucked away; on the wall to the left of the leather-topped desk, completing the last wall, a tall, thin corkboard was hung from the wall, with a padded gold-velvet memo-board beside it, stuck with gold and crimson pins.

On the back wall of the studio, Maia and Cedric hung, above the sideboard Sirius' immense memo-board, with its ornate red-painted frame, still loaded with his old memories.

The rest of the room outside the studio was decorated comfortably; a rich rug of scarlet and crimson silks, hand-knotted, with a border of bounding stags and hounds, was laid down, with Sirius' old brown-leather three-piece suite, two armchairs, and several odd, mismatched tables that didn't go anywhere else but looked good together; the walls were arranged with hip-high bookcases into which Maia had decanted Sirius' literary collection, his books having been stacked three-deep in several bookcases with records; the low bookcases were organised with trinkets and odds and ends alongside the books.

After Neville tripped and nearly broke both his ankle and a box of Sirius' records trying to help carry things downstairs, he was set the task of alphabetising all of Sirius' film-reels, which were arranged in the den in more bookcases Cedric and Maia Conjured. The random cabinets Sirius had filled with his old things were also arranged, including a rather handsome liquor cabinet. Cedric helped Maia stick—not using a Permanent-Sticking Charm, but just an ordinary one—the smaller speakers she had bought, into the two upper corners of the walls, just outside the studio, so that anyone who sat in the den could listen to whatever Sirius would be broadcasting. A large round table was polished and arranged in the corner by the wide-open double-doors, next to a sideboard containing a line of books and several decanters, the cupboards filled with board-games, decks of cards, and random things that would amuse people.

Kreacher brought the many bookcases stuffed with records downstairs from Sirius' room, arranging them around the edges of the second adjoining room. A large carpet had been put down, and in the centre of this, they arranged the large console filled with Sirius' things. Maia had washed and polished the double-doors, and they were propped open, so anyone in the music-library could look straight across the den, through the window into the studio, to Sirius' huge memo-board.

"This…" Cedric grinned.

"This is cool," Neville said softly, gazing around and smiling.

"It needs a bit of decorating," Maia said thoughtfully, gazing around, hands on her hips, as Crookshanks curled around her ankles, purring. The walls had been hung with a rich, vertically-striped ruby and garnet wallpaper, tiny details in gold; several sconces on the walls consisting of levitating balls of golden light were arranged at neat, precise intervals around the room, and two unique chandeliers were hung from the ceiling, another in the music-library. Aside from the bookcases, the only decoration was the memo-board in the studio. "Just to make it feel atmospheric and lived-in, you know."

"Like posters and things?" Neville asked; he was working at the polished round table, loosely packing earth under the leaves of several plants he had just finished potting; in total, seven pots of varying sizes had been planted, each with myriad magical flowers and plants; Neville had told her about a selection of plants Professor Sprout had in the Hogwarts greenhouses that glowed with bioluminescence in the dark, which made Maia very curious; she had also remembered the strange plant in the sweetshop in Diagon Alley, which had grown multiple sweet-like berries.

"Yeah," Maia said thoughtfully. "I can mount and frame some of my photographs; and I can ask Ailith for some. Maybe we could buy a load of magazines and make collages."

"And a Holyhead Harpies calendar," Cedric suggested, glancing at her, and Maia laughed.

"They're the all-female Quidditch team, aren't they? The ones who recently released their saucy charity calendar?" she said, and Cedric grinned.

"Yes, that's them," he chuckled. Maia canted her head to the side as she glanced around the room.

"Oh! And I can get some life-size posters from _The Lord of the Rings_!" she grinned. "Sirius would love them! I know just where to go for some, too."

"Maybe we could go to Diagon Alley tomorrow," Cedric suggested. "We could pick up things from the shops."

"Yeah," Maia said slowly, gazing around. She unfolded her arms, staring at Cedric, and a slow grin spread across her face. "_Yeah_!"

"What?" Cedric couldn't help smiling back at the look on her face.

"I've figured out how we can start advertising the station," she said softly, beaming. She paused. "Got some work to do though, first." She glanced at Cedric. "How many of your friends would you say listen to rock-and-roll?"

"All," Cedric chuckled. "We have to send off to the little shop in Diagon Alley to buy records; they don't play them on the _WWN_."

"No, they do not," Maia sighed softly, then grinned, glancing at Cedric from the corner of her eye. "So, now that the summer's started, all of your friends will be headed to Diagon Alley to buy new records?"

"Probably," Cedric smiled, hands in his pockets. "Now that we can Apparate."

"So they'd probably love a wireless-station that plays rock music?" Maia guessed, and Cedric grinned.

"Absolutely." She nodded.

"D'you reckon you could write to some of your friends? When we've got this stuff set up, and Sirius knows what's going on?" she asked. Cedric nodded, smiling, glancing at the record-sleeve for the _Rolling Stones_' 'Let It Bleed' album. "I mean, if we can get all of the _young_ generation… The people who'll be going into the Ministry in the next few years, who'll be running the country… That would really do so much more good than any legislation…"

"What's that?" Cedric frowned thoughtfully, glancing at the door. Maia strained to listen.

"_Maia, Maia, Maia, Maia_!" Opal was calling without pause.

"That's the warning!" Maia chuckled.

"Very subtle," Cedric laughed. They hastily left the room, careful to close the doors behind them.

"Now, remember," Maia said, glancing at Kreacher, "If Sirius notices his stuff is missing from his old room, you're to tell him that I asked you to put them away until we can find a home for them, because I was afraid Opal might run in and upset one of the bookcases and get squished into _werewolf_ _foie gras_." Kreacher nodded, then glanced at Neville.

"Hands washed before dinner, Master Neville," he croaked, and Neville nodded, then glanced at Maia.

"I'll point out the cloakroom on our way downstairs," she said; they left him in the hall, making their way down to the kitchen with Opal, who had been spotted in her rocking-chair by Remus and asked to go searching for them at the end of the meeting.

"We've got a favour to ask you," Sirius said, as they squeezed their way into the kitchen; Maia sank into Sirius' lap, while Opal curled up under her dad's arm, Cedric perched against the dresser and Neville tried not to look like he was there at all.

"Oh, really?" Maia asked.

"Yes," Remus smiled softly. "Now that the summer's started, all of the Hogwarts students are at home, but after what happened to Harry and Cedric, we can't just let Harry go back to the Dursleys' without someone watching over him." Maia nodded; she'd overheard this before. They had already sorted out a rota for watches, intended to take turns tailing Harry around Little Whinging and make sure he stayed out of trouble, just as they took turns going 'on duty'. So what did they want with her?

"Harry will do something reckless and potentially dangerous if he's left alone in Privet Drive," Sirius said baldly. "His Muggle family are trying enough even at the best of times. But after what's happened, he'll want to know what's going, what we're doing to find Voldemort," There was a collective shudder around the kitchen, "and stop any attempt he can try and make in gaining power again, but we can't risk owls being intercepted." Maia rolled her eyes; she had brought up her problems with owl-post just the other night, asking Sirius why wizards hadn't formed a simpler, much more failsafe method of communication.

"Obviously it'll look fishy to the neighbours if loads of strangers keep turning up in Privet Drive," Tonks said; today, her hair was shoulder-length, sunny golden-blonde. "And none of us are what you'd call experts on fitting in with Muggles, except Ales, who is, in fact, in full-time employment."

"The only candidate we can honestly say would be perfect for the job is you," Tonks interrupted, grinning, and Ailith nodded.

"_Me_?" Maia blurted, surprised. "What do you mean, me?"

"Well, you can Apparate; and you've been blazing your way through your lessons," Remus said proudly.

"_And_ you know how to dress and act like a Muggle," Tonks nodded. "You should probably give us all lessons! But anyway, Remus has been teaching you a good load of Defensive spells, and you can produce a Patronus, so if anything _did_ happen, you'd be well up for handling it. And you'd be able to get back here, and let us know, right after it happened."

"Not that we expect any trouble," Sirius spoke up. "There's powerful protection surrounding Harry and his family. What we really want is someone who can knock on the door of number four, Privet Drive, and get Harry out of the house without raising the suspicion of his aunt and uncle, or anyone else, and can inform Harry on what's going on. You two are just ten months apart; you would seem to a random observer to be friends."

"But… I'm not even sixteen, you said the Trace is still in effect until my seventeenth birthday," Maia said.

"You're homeschooled," Tonks grinned. "So you can use magic outside of term-time."

"I thought it was just under an adult wizard's roof," Maia frowned.

"Technically, yes," Remus nodded.

"And the warning I got from the Improper Use of Magic office?" Maia asked; Sirius shot a sneaky grin down at Madam Bones, who adjusted her monocle. Maia gaped, grinning down at Sirius. "You're going to try and _fix_ my record!"

"Not exactly," Remus said, his lips twitching. "Sirius and I are going to ask you _not_ to perform any magic while you're with Harry. We don't need to draw attention to the fact that you're going to Little Whinging; a lot of questions would have to be answered, questions that we don't want people asking." Maia nodded. "But if there _is_ an instance where you and Harry _must_ use magic, Madam Bones will be the first to know about it. Amelia has one of her assistants in the Trace Monitoring Office keeping an eye out for any magic you or Harry use. So hopefully you won't get into too much trouble."

"Okay…" Maia said slowly. "I thought you had a rota to shadow Harry all sorted out." The adults looked rather surprised and shifted.

"You know about that?"

"I pay attention," Maia said, shrugging, and Sirius chuckled.

"We do have a rota set up," he nodded. "But we'd prefer Harry didn't know about it."

"You're afraid he'll fly off the handle?" Maia said, and Sirius chuckled.

"Something like that."

"So… When would I be visiting Harry?" Maia asked. "And how's he going to know I can be trusted?"

"I gave Harry a photograph of you with Sirius," Remus said, smiling at her softly. "I told him you might be popping up in Little Whinging to meet you at some point. So he knows what you look like. And he knows he can trust you, if you've met Sirius recently, in his human form. And I mentioned that he should ask you something only a Muggle would know the answer to, just to make sure it's you."

"And you needn't stay more than half an hour or so," Sirius said, glancing at Maia. "Just every few days. Just to check Harry's doing okay, that his Muggle family are treating him alright; and so we can pass messages, when he can expect us to come and collect him."

"Okay," Maia said lightly, shrugging.

"Okay?"

"Yeah, I'll do it," Maia said. Sirius grinned.

"Knew you'd say that," he chuckled. "Right! That's everything settled!" With that, the meeting broke up.

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><p>The following morning, Padfoot gambolled around them as Maia, Cedric and Neville—all in their best summer gear, the sky already a blazing sapphire and getting so hot, Maia had slathered sun-cream on her shoulders and nose to keep them from burning—made their way toward the Leaky Cauldron.<p>

Cedric had some pocket-money to spend, and Neville had to be pulled away from the road numerous times because he had his nose stuck in a new book on Herbology from his grandmother, a welcome-home present.

Last night, after the meeting had ended and most of the Order had returned home, the usual suspects remained for dinner, which was now held in the dining-room rather than the kitchen, and Professors McGonagall and Sprout had approached Maia: having discussed the matter with Sirius, they had agreed to each dedicate one day a week for the duration of the summer, to give Maia an intensive course on Transfiguration and Herbology.

Neville, who had a lot of difficulty with Transfiguration, had embarrassedly asked if he could sit in during the sessions with Professor McGonagall; his grandmother had heartily agreed, saying he needed all the help he could get if he was to pass his O.W.L., which Maia had thought rather tactless, as Neville's face had turned beetroot-red with humiliation.

Professor Sprout had spoken with Professor Dumbledore, and Madam Rosmerta, who invited them to use the Three Broomsticks fireplace for Floo Network transportation between Grimmauld Place and Hogsmeade, so they could walk up, one day a week, to spend in the Hogwarts greenhouses; Professor Sprout said it would be good for Maia and Neville to be thrown into intensive care of the greenhouses as her 'assistants'.

Cedric didn't ask to sit in on the lessons; he was going into his final, N.E.W.T. year at Hogwarts come September, but he wasn't going to sit around being useless. He said he would get his homework out of the way first, and then start working on the library with Sirius.

"So how long have you been in London?" Cedric asked, squinting in the sunlight; Maia adjusted her sunglasses on her nose, checking the road as the green man glowed at the crossing.

"A little over two weeks?" she said, canting her head to one side. "It seems like far longer."

"Is it always like that at meals?" Cedric asked.

Maia grinned. "Usually. Mostly dinner, but sometimes people will pop in before work for a bite to eat, or they'll stop by at lunchtime, or for afternoon-tea. Tonks and Ailith are regulars, now; they usually stay until late. Though I think that's not so much to do with the food as it is the men who live there," she added, as Padfoot ran up and down the street, barking happily. Cedric gave her an inquisitive look, smiling.

"You mean Snuffles and Professor Lupin?"

"_Remus_," Maia corrected him, chuckling, and he smiled; Remus had asked Cedric and Neville to call him by his first-name, as he was no longer their teacher, although he had offered to give Neville some instruction, because he'd looked so desperate at the prospect of receiving his end-of-year exam results. "And yes."

"Really?" Cedric smiled, looking thoughtful.

"I reckon," Maia nodded. "Snuffles definitely likes the look of Ailith."

"I noticed he kept looking at her last night, when you two were talking," Cedric said, smiling softly.

"Oh, he was probably just trying to work out what we were planning to do with all the stuff I bought from Gambol & Jape's the other day," Maia said, grinning, and Cedric chuckled.

"Tonks is cool," Neville said, glancing up from his book on Herbology. "She's really nice, even though I spilt that Butterbeer all over her."

"Oh, she does that to herself plenty often enough," Maia chuckled. "She can trip over thin air if you don't watch her carefully. I considered putting stair-gates in to stop her tripping down them."

"And she's an Auror," Neville breathed, looking appropriately awed.

"I was surprised at how relaxed and down-to-earth the members of the Frabjous Chizpurfles are," Cedric said thoughtfully. "Especially Vittorio. And they're bringing out a new album?" Cedric said.

"All the songs have lyrics that should raise awareness," Maia said. "Jack is a Muggle-born, so the pro-pureblood laws really hit home; and, well, you met Opal. Hard to imagine she'll grow up with everyone in this world despising her."

"My dad couldn't believe it when I told him Professor Lupin was a werewolf," Cedric said thoughtfully. "Then I got an Outstanding in my Defence Against the Dark Arts O.W.L., and I think that really changed his attitude on werewolves."

"Professor Lupin was a _really_ good teacher," Neville piped up. "He gave me extra lessons last year; I really got all the stuff we learned. And then _Crouch_ snuck his way in…" Neville's kind, round face turned inexplicably angry; it was an uncharacteristic expression for kind, forgetful Neville. Cedric sighed, his shoulders falling slightly; Maia glanced at him; he was frowning at the ground.

"If I hadn't been in that room… I don't think I would've been able to believe it," he said. "The whole Tournament was a setup to murder Harry." His expression turned thoughtful and a little wide-eyed as they walked on. Maia wondered whether he was reliving what had happened in the graveyard; that Harry had taken a Killing Curse for him, and that _Harry had survived_. For the second time; the only wizard in history to ever survive the Avada Kedavra curse once, let alone twice.

"How's your chest?" Maia asked, glancing at him. "Sirius said a dirty great serpent tried to snack on your ribs."

"Oh… Madam Pomfrey had me on dittany, so I shouldn't scar," Cedric sighed, shrugging slightly. "I have to pick up another bottle at the apothecary…" He pulled himself out of his reverie. "So, what were you doing last night? What were you painting?"

"Oh," Maia grinned, tugging her journal out of her little bag—Cedric glanced from the journal to the bag, then raised an eyebrow at her.

"Undetectable Extending Charm," she said, smiling. "Useful. Anyway…" She opened her journal to the last page she had been working on, which was full of one-inch watercolour illustrations. "Designs for…a logo."

"_Radio_ _Rock_," Cedric read out, peering at one of the tiny drawings, which looked like a highly-realistic vinyl record painted there, with the letters '_Radio Rock_' written in golden-yellow ink around the circular red label: there were other designs; about a dozen of them. She had experimented with working a big black dog into the design; a phoenix, both in flight and curled like a never-ending serpent; a motorcycle-wheel; a dragon; a Snitch; a pocket-watch design that could tell, not the time, but the station; and lastly a wand with golden lines radiating from the tip, like radio-waves from a tower.

"I thought, I could design stickers and badges," she said, canting her head to one side thoughtfully as she glanced down at her journal. "And I thought about having a load of posters and leaflets printed, maybe to give the man at the record-shop, that he can give his customers with things they purchase."

"That's a good idea," Cedric nodded.

"Except…which design?" Maia smiled. She frowned thoughtfully. "I suppose I could try and make them really unique, and practice my charms on them." Cedric glanced at her, looking very thoughtful. "What?"

"When I was…about twelve, my mother gave me a journal, to keep all my homework assignments organised in," Cedric said, but his cheeks warmed, and he gave her a smile that said he hadn't used it at all. "Every day, there was a new charm, for things like decorating and customising things." Maia gasped delightedly.

"Do you still have it?"

"I might do. Down in the bottom of my school-trunk," Cedric said. "But you can buy regular books from Flourish and Blotts full of charms like that." And he told her about the badges that someone had made last year, which had said 'Support Cedric Diggory', and, when pressed, changed to 'Potter Stinks'.

"I asked people not to wear them," he sighed, looking mildly annoyed. Maia's mind was whirring with the possibilities of badges that could _change_, with special effects! She had sudden images of the phoenix unfurling its wings, soaring in a wide circle and setting the badge ablaze, burning the words '_Radio Rock_' onto the badge and leaving a crackling, glittering, ember-like imprint on the curled-up phoenix.

Together with a warlock from Liverpool, they made their way through the archway behind the Leaky Cauldron, into Diagon Alley. Maia had a set shopping-list: most of which she could buy in the various shops, but some of which she had to purchase in Muggle shops on the way back to Grimmauld Place. She didn't mind the boys wandering off; they arranged to meet back up outside _Flourish and Blotts_ at ten o'clock, and Maia set off.

Intending to make the studio lived-in and atmospheric, she picked up random little things: a model phoenix; a miniature chess-set with the pieces all resembling different dogs; a letter-organiser with different cubbies; she went to the record-shop and bought some posters and postcards, and got into a long discussion with the enthusiastic owner about her idea, receiving his pledge to give out any leaflets she produced on the wireless show, and Maia mentioned that she could promote the shop on the show, given that most records played would be available only from his shop; in the sweetshop, she bought up a selection of Sirius' favourites and asked about the strange plant on the counter, then went to the Herbology shop to inquire into the plant.

The Herbology shop was more like a giant greenhouse emporium, overflowing with plants of all kinds, shapes, colours, scents, and magical attributes, and she found Neville in the midst of a corner bursting with greenery. There were ordinary things like wolfsbane, and chocolate-scented mint, snapdragons, Chinese lantern plants, gourds, and live plants that were dried out and powdered in the apothecary. But then she saw a sign near the Venus-Fly Trap that said it caught rats, rather than flies. There were plants that shivered, their frilly scarlet blossoms whirling like a flamenco dancer's skirts; there were enormous sunflowers the size of dinner-plates that tittered with voices like chattering mice; vibrantly-coloured miniature toadstools that hopped about and squeaked excitedly; there were delicate, feathery plants with tiny white flowers that seemed to shimmer and twinkle like stars, hidden in the darkest recesses of the leaves nearest the soil; and dog-roses that wolf-whistled as she passed.

She inquired about the plant she had seen in the sweet-shop, and discovered a display of the dainty-flowered plants that grew strawberries, raspberries and blackcurrants together in sparkling, strange, chewy boiled-sweet-like fruits. They weren't just limited to berries; tiny plums without stones, kumquats, mangoes and kiwis, blood-oranges without the rind, as well as pomegranates without their hard shell. There was one that grew mini _sugarplums_. The fruits were all miniature, no bigger than half an inch fat, but bursting with flavour and sweet-like, like a chewy boiled-sweet.

Given that she had seen a large section of Herbology books, she inquired about publications by her aunt's Israeli Herbologist friend. The proprietor could inquire, but she was better off going to _Flourish and Blotts_ for foreign-language publications. So she left the shop, with two of the strange sweet-plants, and Neville trailing behind, biting his lip over whether to buy a "fantastic" book he'd seen called _The Wonders of the Great Barrier Reef: An In-Depth Study of the Magical Coral and Seaweed of Australia_.

They went briefly to _Quality Quidditch Supplies_, where Neville gazed longingly at the _Firebolt_, the top-quality, international standard broomstick on which the Irish National Team had won the Quidditch World Cup last summer, but said sadly, "I can't fly at all. I broke my wrist the first time I had a flying-lesson at Hogwarts. And I lost my Remembrall."

"What's a Remembrall?" Maia asked curiously.

"It looks like a marble, filled with white smoke," Neville said, "only, when you touch it, it'll glow red if you've forgotten something. It never told me _what_ I'd forgotten, though…" Maia chuckled softly at his wistful expression; she cheered him up flashing "June" in the _Holyhead Harpies'_ new calendar.

"You know, I didn't ask what Snuffles' favourite Quidditch team is," Maia said thoughtfully, frowning at the display of League team-posters.

"It's probably the Harpies," Neville said, glancing at her. "I heard Ailith talking with him about how the captain, Gwenog Jones, is a…"

"A cow," Maia nodded, remembering overhearing that little titbit, to which Ailith _hadn't_ disagreed. "Still, one can't show favouritism," she said, and chose a poster of Kevin and Karl Broadmoor, two brutal-looking Beaters for the _Falmouth Falcons_.

"The captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, Oliver Wood, was signed as a reserve Keeper to Puddlemere United," Neville said, examining a full set of navy-blue robes crossed with two golden rushes on the left chest. "He and Harry won us the Quidditch Cup for the first time since Charlie Weasley left Hogwarts."

"I've never seen a game of Quidditch," Maia admitted, "But I've been reading _Quidditch Through the Ages_. And I heard the World Cup was held last year."

"I didn't get to go," Neville said sadly. "Gran didn't want to go; she wouldn't buy tickets. But the Weasleys went, and so did Harry, and, I think, Cedric, too. The Champion from Durmstrang was the Seeker for the Bulgarian National Team, Viktor Krum."

"Very cool," Maia grinned. "Hang on, an international Quidditch player is still at _school_?"

"I think he finished this year," Neville frowned thoughtfully. "Hermione went to the Yule Ball with him at Christmas. I'd asked her… I thought she'd made it up that she had an escort, because she didn't want to go with me…" Maia glanced at Neville; he seemed about the least self-confident person she had ever met.

"What was the Triwizard Tournament like?" she asked him. "To watch it?"

"Terrifying," Neville said, giving Maia a brief smile. And then he was telling her all about the three Tasks: the dragons; the Grindylows in the lake; the maze filled with magical creatures, spells and other obstacles. They played around with a set of Omnioculars, before Maia bought the calendar and two posters; as they made their way to _Flourish and Blotts_, Neville asked where Sirius had disappeared to.

"He usually wanders off to Knocturn Alley," Maia said, in an undertone. "He can eavesdrop and learn things the rest of the Order can't."

"It must be really cool to change into an animal whenever you want," Neville said.

"Maybe," Maia said thoughtfully. He shot her a disbelieving look. "What if your Animagus form was a snail? Or a worm? Or an _elephant_? Wouldn't exactly be able to slip under the radar, would it!" Neville laughed, and Maia had to stop herself from pressing her face against the glass as she gazed at a brand-new display in the window of _Flourish and Blotts_.

"You know, Hermione mentioned that you'd sent her a letter about S.P.E.W.," Neville said, glancing at her. "She was absolutely thrilled."

"Are you a member?" Maia asked curiously.

"I paid the two Sickles to join," Neville said, looking rather shamefaced as he added, "Mostly because Hermione kept scaring me, rattling the box of badges around and glaring at me, lecturing me about house-elf enslavement."

"Ah, I see," Maia laughed softly. She checked her watch. "I wonder where Cedric's got to." They watched the Alley for a few minutes; Maia checked inside the bookshop. Eventually, they saw Cedric, recognisable due to his good looks, with Padfoot lolloping alongside him. "There they are!"

Inside _Flourish and Blotts_, Neville disappeared to the section on Herbology; Cedric went to have a look at some books on advanced Transfiguration and Arithmancy; Maia inquired about books on decorating-type charms. The illustrations were all vibrant, moving, displaying the effects of specific charms on various objects, from conjuring garlands and bunting, charming Christmas baubles to sing carols, conjure golden bubbles and special-effects charms including making lettering flash in different colours, sparkle vividly with diamond-like glitter, making things emanate soft light in different colours, flashing patterns like the tiniest silent fireworks. It was a fantastic book; she couldn't help grinning as she looked through the pages. Because she asked specifically, the saleswizard was able to find for her a very slim pamphlet on badge-designing, with different spells showing varying special-effects. The printer's Ailith had given her information on for Maia's fairytales would also print posters and leaflets, and as they made their way through Diagon Alley—stopping in the Wizarding equipment shop, where Maia picked up a small badge-maker and supplies—she got to thinking about designing a small postcard that could be distributed from the record-shop with every sale the owner made.

On the way back to Grimmauld Place, Maia popped into a newsagent's, purchasing her new _Vogue_, _Teen-Vogue_, _Harper's Bazaar_, _Jane_, _i-D_, _Punk Planet_, _Rolling Stone_ and several other magazines on music, a _GQ_ and some motorcycle magazines, one of which she stuck her nose into as they made the rest of the walk back to Grimmauld Place.

Sirius the man appeared as soon as he had stepped over the threshold; Maia grinned, handing him the magazine. "'_Bikes to Die For; Babes to Fight For_', page twelve, it's a _great _read!" she laughed, thrusting the magazine at Sirius, grinning.

"Thanks," Sirius said, quirking an eyebrow as he took the magazine. "You came back rather empty-handed, Neville." Neville gave a sort of shrug, and followed Sirius downstairs into the kitchen; Sirius sat down with his magazine, flicking his wand, and the tea-service levitated over. As the teapot poured tea for them all, a plate of treats Maia had made earlier offering itself to them, Sirius sat back, a smile slowly but clearly spreading across his face as he read the article on page twelve.

"Sirius, have you finished reading _The Help_ yet?" Maia asked, when she was certain he had finished reading; he glanced up, setting the magazine down.

"Not yet," he said. "Why?"

"I was thinking Hermione would probably love it," Maia said thoughtfully, and Sirius gave a slight nod, thoughtful.

"Have you read her reply yet?" Sirius asked.

"No. Not yet," Maia said, hiding a yawn. "Got too enthralled by _Confronting the Faceless_ last night… I've _got_ to stop reading it before bedtime." Sirius chuckled, and Cedric smiled.

"So… It's our _Day Off_," Sirius said, glancing at Maia. "What are you three going to do?" Sirius had to explain to Cedric and Neville the concept of the official Day Off within Number Twelve; "I've had to officially designate Saturdays as a Day Off, otherwise Maia would have us working our fingers to the bone every day of the week."

"Hard labour is good for you," Maia smirked subtly.

"So are twelve meals a day, and I much prefer that," Sirius said, and Maia laughed.

In the end, both Neville and Cedric decided to get a head-start on their summer homework assignments; Maia copied down all of Neville's assignments, so she could have a go at them too, but when they went upstairs to use the study, leaving Sirius to the bike magazines, Maia brought out her diary, her paints, and Hermione's reply.

_9 June, 2012_

_Dear Maia,_

_You sound like me! Ron and Harry joke that just one of me is scary enough sometimes; I've been telling them all about you from what you've written in your letters. Harry really wants to meet you, as Snuffles' niece; he's really glad Snuffles has someone looking after him, he deserves it. You sat A-Levels at fifteen? How did you cope with the workload?!_

_I know what you mean about seeing things clearly because we didn't come from this society. And I'm grateful beyond words that you are actually sincere about your interest in S.P.E.W. This is absolutely why I've been trying to get more members in the last year; to share ideas, combine our brain-power to make a difference._

_The house-elf census is a _fantastic _idea. Actually, I don't know why I didn't think of it. Mind you, I've been too focused on trying to encourage house-elves to want freedom. But a lot of what you've said, ideas you've had about S.P.E.W., make a lot of sense. I confess that I have had little exposure to the majority of house-elves in Britain—Dobby, Winky and the Hogwarts house-elves—so I'm not sure how the majority of house-elves are treated. But a census would be a fantastic way, as you said, of keeping track of how wizards treat their elves._

_I didn't manage to catch Dobby or Winky; I've been studying for exams and packing to come home, but collecting their testimonies, especially Dobby's, could possibly be a key part of a campaign to raise awareness. Could you ask Kreacher about his life?_

_The Social Services-type programme sounds spot on for our aims; where possible, S.P.E.W. could encourage elves to accept a wage, and make sure they don't take tea-towels as a mark of slavery, but wear clothes. It seems the majority of house-elves are brainwashed to believe they want to be enslaved; this could begin the process of breaking that indoctrination._

_I love the hospital idea, especially run by house-elves who possibly can't find work, or want to earn a proper wage and have a say in the Ministry._

_I've cleaned the library out of books on house-elves for the summer. As you said, it will definitely be beneficial to study up on their physiology as much as their branch of magic and what binds them, and why, to wizards, the better to help meet their needs in the future._

_I do have to agree with you about the present Ministry—Fudge and his Senior Undersecretary in particular; I've read they're both in charge (the Secretary mostly) of restricting centaur lands, stripping the last of the werewolves' rights, and even pushing through pro-pureblood laws, which I find disgusting in this day and age; there's no place for them. Written down as you said, I think it probably is imperative to get a house-elf into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures; that's the first step to legal acknowledgement and equality. I'm very glad to hear that Mr Diggory is being brought around to the idea of treating house-elves and other magical creatures on equal footing._

_Oh, but if you've got support from one of the Wizengamot, that will go a very long way for S.P.E.W. When do you plan to interview her house-elves? We should probably put together a proper census form. What types of questions should we ask? How should our findings be organised?_

_My family are going on holiday to France for two weeks, the day after Hogwarts breaks up for the summer; but Mrs Weasley wrote to me inviting me to stay with Ron's family, so I'll be coming to stay with them probably the day after I get back from France. So that's two weeks, and then I'm sure we can meet up, perhaps in Diagon Alley if you spend a lot of time there. I'll keep thinking about S.P.E.W. while I'm on holiday; if you want to start thinking up ideas for fundraising and publicity, we can really get stuck in when we meet._

_Looking forward to meeting you,_

_Sincerely,_

_Hermione_

_P.S.: I enclosed your badge, hopefully it arrived with the letter._

Thinking over fundraising possibilities for S.P.E.W., Maia set to work with her paints, designing the logo for _Radio_ _Rock_ and incorporating it into designs for badges, and postcards she could distribute. Key to the postcards was the phrase '_The ONLY wireless station to play __nothing but__ Rock-n-Roll_'. She painted several copies of the one-inch badge design she had made, with the phoenix curled into a ball, and opened the new books and the pamphlet on badge-making she had purchased, and Neville gave up on his Potions essay to watch, and read through Maia's books, suggesting different effects.

The result was a handful of designs each eye-wateringly vibrant with special-effects: red and gold sparks fizzing like a Catherine Wheel around the edge; crackling with artificial fire with a strong reddish-golden glow; chiming the phrase'_Radio Rock_!' enthusiastically; pulsating and radiating like coals; glittering like miniature fireworks, the name shimmering into place…

Maia made copies and carefully cut out the designs—each a little larger than an inch in circumference to allow space to curl around the back of the badge—and used her new badge-maker (which could make either one-inch or two-inch badges, depending on which slot was used) to construct prototypes. Cedric, still working away diligently, nevertheless got involved in the numerous designs Maia tried for the postcards, the last of which Maia set to landscape, with the logo at the left, large, artistic but clearly-legible writing saying,

'_The ONLY wireless station _

_that plays __nothing but_

_Rock-n-Roll!_

_Join us at_-'

She left space for the station number, and turned to another postcard-sized piece of watercolour paper, working hastily with her paintbrush to illustrate a small record-player, and beneath it, she painted with red, leaving white lettering that said 'KEEP CALM and ROCK ON', picking up a copy of one of the badge designs, using a Sticking Charm to attach it to the back of the postcard in place of a stamp, with information on _Radio_ _Rock_ written beside it, leaving half the back free to actually write a note and address.

"Right!" Maia grinned, dusting off her hands. "I think you've done enough homework for the day. What d'you say we go and finish up in the studio?"

Neville didn't need to be asked twice to ditch his Potions homework; he said he was completely terrified of the professor, Snape, and consistently went to pieces and received abysmal marks: Maia, going through the _Magical Drafts and Potions_ by Arsenius Jigger, suggested they go through the book together, showing Neville the twin-burner camping stove she was using, both for her schoolwork and to make cosmetics she was experimenting with.

Without their lookout, Opal, Maia retrieved one of the tiny glass dreidel-like Sneakoscopes she had bought in _Gambol & Jape's_, which alerted to the presence of parental-type figures, and they set to work in the den.

'Work' meant lounging on the leather sofa and armchairs, feet up on the coffee-table, each using either their wands or scissors, going through the magazines Maia had picked up; she sat on the floor, precisely cutting mounts for each of the large photograph prints she had selected from her collection of recent Number Twelve negatives, and framing them. When she had these neatly hanging from the walls at precisely-measured intervals, she, Cedric and Neville went crazy with posters and collages; Maia unfurled a full-length poster of Jessica Alba in _Sin City_ on the back of the door, and Cedric pinned the _Holyhead_ _Harpies'_ calendar in the studio; Neville arranged the potted plants, and the strange sweet-like ones Maia had purchased at the Herbology emporium; novels were stacked on the corner-cabinet with a clock that had one hand, which moved to point at labels like 'Time for a Beer'; 'Have a Nap' and 'Listen to Music'. The three-door cabinet was stocked with bottles of Butterbeer, board-games and books; Maia found the cut-crystal sweet-dish etched with hounds, a family antique, and inscribed the name _Padfoot_ onto it before filling it with the sweets Sirius loved.

She and Cedric laughed as they arranged a collage on the second memo-board, with loads of photographs she and Ailith had taken, some of the old newspaper articles about Sirius since his breakout from Azkaban, a few photos of Harry; sketches of phoenixes and dragons; paintings of some of the members of the Order Maia had copied from her diary, with small '45 record-sleeves Maia had found in the Muggle record-shop beside the Leaky Cauldron; pinning a load of stickers that included comical phrases, one of them featuring a female stick-figure running away from a male, with the words 'Fast Food' beneath them; a _Hunger Games_ 'May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favour' postcard; Maia loved the flaming mocking-jay pin. She pinned up a photograph of Marilyn Monroe in her shimmery gold dress; and several photos from motorcycle magazines, with gorgeous women all over even _more_ beautiful bikes. She pinned up a _Star Wars_ 'Your Empire Needs You' poster, and a postcard that showed caricatures of the first through sixth _Doctors Who_'s styles, and a picture that showed the _Beatles_ crossing Abbey Road, a postcard of the makeup for _KISS_, a Warhol-esque print of Blondie, and a _Sex Pistols_ 'God Save the Queen' flag postcard.

She hung a mobile of the solar-system, made of enchanted glass that tinkled and shone like vibrant little suns, in the corner of the studio, while Kreacher brought out several lamps to scatter on the surfaces, and she and Cedric had a lot of fun using the decorating charms to completely cover the ceiling of the studio with bubbles of soft golden light; draping Gryffindor bunting from wall-sconce to wall-sconce; pinning Sirius' old, large, faded Gryffindor flag, sewn with a roaring golden lion, in the corner.

Maia even found what seemed to be a one-of-a-kind Order of the Phoenix t-shirt; now faded-black, a burning phoenix splashed across the chest. She carefully mounted this in a frame and hung it on the wall, shining the light of several golden bubbles onto it.

When the Order members started filtering in for the meeting, they had finally finished the room to Maia's satisfaction, and she tucked her postcards into her journal, the badges into her apron pocket, and led the way downstairs to greet incoming Order members and help set up food and drinks in the kitchen. Maia had been at Grimmauld Place long enough that she now knew each member's mother's middle-name, the name of their first pet and their drinks preference, and Cedric helped her hand out glasses of wine and plum-brandy, little tipples of kirshwasser and cider, Butterbeers, and when Madam Rosmerta arrived she took over mixing cocktails and handing out mead. Maia set out platters of still-hot _croque madame_ muffins, plates of shredded _tartiflette_ nests (several people's favourite snack during meetings) and _chouquette_, _gougères_ and some of the éclairs Maia had piped with rich chocolate crème pâtisserie. Sweet and savoury, with bowls of fruit and a platter of fresh sandwich-rolls filled with different meats, cheeses and jams.

Bill Weasley was having a good-natured argument with his mother about the length of his hair, Mrs Weasley claiming that, now he was no longer "gallivanting around the desert" but had a desk-job in London, he needed to start looking the part, and _cutting his hair_ every once in a while. Mrs Weasley, who had spent one afternoon with Maia and Mrs Lovett mending robes, had woefully confessed to Remus that she suspected her firstborn had met someone. "_A woman_," she had said, looking absolutely scandalised.

Beside them, Jules was talking to Sirius, laughing about something, and Opal, tucked out of the way, stood on the dresser with a dish of Maia's sweet _chouquette_ (decorated with icing, little pink-currants, baby-strawberries and sugar-Snitches to please the little girl), flirting innocently with Cedric and Bill, offering him a _chouquette_ to stop the ambush from Mrs Weasley. Jules had asked whether Opal could spend the entire day for the next few weeks at Number Twelve: his parents were going on holiday to visit his great-aunt in South Africa, and as they were the usual suspects to take care of her while he was at work, provided it wasn't the full moon, he was in a bit of a bind.

Maia had readily agreed; Opal was so incessantly cheerful and precocious she had everyone laughing, and Sirius enjoyed her constant chatter, delicious giggles and irrepressible enthusiasm. So they would be playing host to a five-year-old, as well as Cedric and Neville, and the next day Maia started putting together a bedroom for Opal. Near the time everyone was expected to have arrived, Maia sidled up to Sirius.

"Can you come with me for a bit?" she asked, glancing at Ailith, Tonks, Jack and Vittorio.

"Why?"

"Well, to stop you pouting and feeling insignificant, and to stop you driving me and Remus up the wall when you get into your morbid, depressed and self-destructive moods," Maia said, "I'm glad to say I've come up with a rather clever little idea."

"Oh, yeah?" Tonks chuckled, glancing at Sirius' expression.

"Yes. Come with me," Maia smiled, and curiosity lit several faces of those standing around them. She gestured Sirius to follow her. "Come on!" Sirius glanced at Remus, Ailith and Lothaire before hauling himself out of his chair, and several people followed Maia upstairs to the first-floor.

"What've you been up to?" Sirius asked, glancing at her shrewdly.

"Worried?" Maia smirked.

"A little," Sirius admitted; Maia laughed, and grinned.

"Well, close your eyes, please," she said, and Sirius gave her an enigmatic look. "Do it, or you won't get your surprise!"

"And it's a really good one!" Neville piped up; he and Cedric were smiling with anticipation.

"Yes! Thank you, Neville! It _is_ a good surprise!" Maia said, hands on her waist. Opal was peeking from around Bill Weasley's legs, eyes shining with delight that the surprise was being unveiled.

"Okay, okay, I'm closing my eyes," Sirius said, squeezing them shut tight. Maia squinted at him to check, then did a funny dance; Opal giggled, but Sirius didn't, proving he wasn't looking.

"'Kay," she said, nodding, and took hold of his hand. "Keep them shut. Or it won't be as much of a surprise." She led him in through the studio-den door, then into the smaller studio. Positioning him in front of the broadcasting microphone, facing through the window into the den and the music-library beyond the open double-doors (each decorated with posters, collages, photographs and Gryffindor flags). The others had clustered in the open doorway, gazing around the room; Remus' jaw was hanging open slightly. Tonks had leapt onto the leather sofa and sprawled there, picking up a copy of _Rolling Stone_ magazine; Ailith's eyes were sparkling, gazing around the room, at the mounted, framed photographs Maia had printed on large paper, at the collages, the plant-pots Neville had put together, drifting over to peek inside the studio-door, grinning as she saw what was waiting a foot away from Sirius.

"Okay… Now open your eyes," Maia said, and Sirius did. It took him a moment; he _stared_. His fathomless grey eyes swept around the room—gazing through the window, past Tonks lounging on his old leather sofa, through the decorated double-doors, to _his_ bookcases stuffed with records arranged around the edges of the room, _his_ console in the centre; his eyes swept over the decorated walls, at the photographs beautifully framed, the t-shirt Maia had found and illuminated.

Then he turned and started gazing around the studio, taking in the huge memo board from his adolescence that he had saved; at the new collages; and the _Holyhead Harpies_ calendar; the sweet-bowl inscribed with his name like a doggy-dish, which made him chuckle; the strange one-handed clock, and the mobile illuminating the corner of the room; the golden bubbles on the ceiling, the low sideboard filled with records, the small plants arranged, the books, the letter-organiser and the clipboard Maia had set up on the desk in front of the microphone with a few suggestions for a wireless-show. He gazed at the photographs she and Cedric had pinned to the memo-board, and the Butterbeers and games collected neatly in the three-door cabinet, the twin record-player sitting atop it. He picked up one of the miniature dog chess-pieces, a French bulldog pawn, and read the title of the enormous nearly-1000-page _The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion_ Maia had picked up in _Waterstones_, the stacks of _Punk Planet_, _Kerrang!_ and _Rolling Stone_ magazines lying beneath, and the sole Wizard magazine publication dedicated to music. Ailith had her camera out, discreetly taking photographs. Maia grinned at Sirius' expression.

"This is what you three have been up to all day?" he said, glancing at Maia with wide eyes.

"I helped!" Opal piped up excitedly, swallowed in the seat of a big leather armchair in the den.

"Yes you did!" Maia grinned. "You're an excellent lookout!" Opal beamed.

"You…you bought brand-new wireless broadcasting equipment," Sirius said, gazing at Maia, who grinned again.

"I thought a radical, pro-reform pirate wireless station seemed just up your street," she said, and Sirius' fathomless grey eyes glowed vibrantly, sheer, unadulterated delight radiating from his face as he grinned in a way she had seen only in photographs of him as a young man. "As you said, one of the first days I got here, you've started turning this place into a den of iniquity against the old pureblood-standbys. I think you called it full of 'decent, liberal-minded non-elitists; a holding for Muggle-loving, anti-Establishment, pro-reform, pseudo-neo _Untouchables_'. So why not _flaunt it_!" She grinned. "The Ministry can't trace Grimmauld Place, so even if anyone recognised your voice, they wouldn't be able to find you, so you can do _anything_ you want to.

"I mean, this wireless station could be first and foremost about integrating Muggle music with Wizard rock-n-roll, but, in between records, you can talk about _anything_, anything the Order is trying to raise awareness about; you can do it _without_ getting in trouble, the way no one else can," Maia exclaimed, and the grin on Sirius' face slowly got bigger and bigger. "You can talk about anything—you can talk about werewolf rights, and eradicating pro-pureblood laws; you can talk about the expulsion of giants from Britain and how that will affect society if Voldemort returns asks them to join him; you can talk about how wrong the Ministry is to set Voldemort's old army, the Dementors, at the prison filled with his supporters. You can talk about how wrong it is to limit the centaurs' territory, and you can mouth off as much as you like about the corrupt judicial system, and how draconian the Ministry is, and the treatment of house-elves. You could even talk about Muggle stuff, like books, and films, and _Doctor_ _Who_. Stuff that can help wizards assimilate with Muggles when they need to." Sirius grinned, but he chuckled, shaking his head in slight disbelief.

"Where would we even start, how would we even get people to listen?" he said, looking a little doubtful, as he left the studio to peer at the large photographs framed on the wall, the old Order of the Phoenix t-shirt mounted like it should have belonged in a museum.

"Ah, well, I've already thought about that," Maia grinned, and Sirius chuckled.

"Of course you have," he said affectionately, grinning, gazing at her inquisitively, his grin still glowing.

"I've asked Cedric whether his friends would listen to a wireless station that plays rock-n-roll. The answer is _in a heartbeat_; there's absolutely no alternative for younger listeners. They'll flock to this station to listen to music they can't hear anywhere else," Maia said, and Cedric and Neville—and Tonks and Jack and the boys—both nodded, grinning. "And, I was talking with Mal today—that's the owner of the _Record Shack_ in Diagon Alley, and he said he would not only pass out any fliers I can print about the station to publicise it, but he'd also _pay_ to have his shop advertised on the air. And, I thought, Cedric and Neville could help too, by writing to their friends about the station, and so can everyone in the Order, so word gets spread around. All Ailith's and the boys' contacts in the music industry, they'd all be clamouring to have their stuff played on your show, they'd listen to it. Ales could ask one of her colleagues at the _Prophet_ to mention it.

"And, even if you only got the Hogwarts crowd listening in," Maia continued thoughtfully, "that's a huge target-audience you'd be hitting. And they're still young and impressionable, leaving school in a few years, going into the Ministry and taking your ideas with them—that'll go a huge way, if you can get the younger generations who'll be running the country in the next few years listening in."

She paused, taking a deep breath, glancing at Sirius, who looked like he was halfway between bursting out laughing and kissing her. He compensated by scrunching his face, pressing his nose to hers, and laughing, hugging her shoulders.

"You must've got your brains from me," he chuckled, and Maia laughed. Slinging an arm around her shoulders, he stood to her side; she wrapped an arm around his waist, grinning.

"So you think it's a good idea?" she said.

"I think…this is _incredible_!" Sirius grinned. He glanced down at her, his eyes warm and thoughtful. "You did all this just to give me something to do?"

"You told me that you'd wanted to have your own wireless show," Maia said, glancing up at her uncle. "You said, when the war ended, that's what you'd wanted. So why wait until you're exonerated? Can you imagine their faces at the Ministry if they were to find out Sirius Black is the DJ for the most popular wireless station?"

"You mentioned fliers," Ailith said curiously; Maia set down her journal, flipping through the pages, and found the postcards she had designed, and dug the handful of buttons out of her pocket.

"These are just prototypes, mind," Maia said, as the badges scattered on the polished wood of the coffee-table, glittering like fireworks, pulsating vivid golden glows, flashing and changing colour and burning like flames. "And I had another idea for a badge, or the logo."

"'Radio Rock'," Sirius read from one of the postcards.

"Simple, but effective," Maia said, glancing up as Opal peered curiously at the badges. "And, I thought I could go to that printer you told me about, Ailith, to get these postcards and the designs for the badges mass-printed."

"You've done all of the work," Sirius said thoughtfully, staring at the postcards, the badges, and the studio.

"It wasn't that hard to get it all organised, you already had the records, and an empty room. Cedric and Neville helped decorate," Maia said. "All you have to do now is choose an unused station and start talking. You can broadcast rock-n-roll for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week if you want!"

"Not to seem rude," Jack spoke up, and Maia noticed that Vittorio looked highly interested. "But don't you think that _might_ be an ever so slightly _monotonous_ experience for the listeners?" He glanced at Sirius, grinning. "How about twelve hours each?" Vittorio nodded, a silent request to broadcast, and Maia glanced at Ailith from the corner of her eye, winking.

"This is _fantastic_!" Sirius grinned handsomely.

"Are you going to stop moaning about being grounded now?" Maia asked hopefully; he shot her another grin and squeezed her shoulders.

"We've got business to discuss," he said, grinning at Jack and Vittorio. Maia glanced at him, and he grinned again. "And _you_! Let's have a closer look at that artwork!"

"You've got a few days, at least, to start planning your shows," Maia said, as she displaced Opal from the armchair, pulling the little girl into her lap after she had sat down, and handing Sirius the postcards and badges. "These need printing and distributing…"

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review!


	15. Chapter 15

**A.N.**: For Marlicat, and everyone else who's recently reviewed this story! I'm now writing chapter twenty-one, so I thought I could update a few new chapters. In this chapter, Maia goes to see Harry!

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_15_

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><p>Several things came out of Maia organising the broadcasting studio for Sirius: Firstly, Sirius became irrepressibly excited, so enthusiastic that everything about the house seemed to vibrate with sunshine and laughter. Jack and Vittorio, two musicians who made their money selling records that had never been played over the wireless, spent the next few days at Grimmauld Place. The den outside the broadcasting-studio became the second-favourite place to hang out when not in the kitchen, and when the Order had meetings in the dining-room, it was to there that Maia, Cedric, Neville and Opal retreated early every evening. It was there that her television was moved, with Maia's collection of films, and Sirius' projector. Opal, who visited her Muggle grandparents and cousins on a regular basis, was thrilled that Maia had <em>Doctor Who<em> on DVD, because she was going to marry Matt Smith, and wanted to be Little Amelia Pond for Halloween.

Maia wanted a TARDIS, knowing it was absolutely possible to make things bigger on the inside, and there was such a thing as time-travel—Sirius was proof of that—and but she regretted that there were no thousand-year-old aliens from Gallifrey.

Neville disappeared to the greenhouse for several hours each day, while Maia worked steadily on her 'dream garden'. Every morning, after they had collected eggs at the Hobbit-hole and fed the Bantams, Maia and Opal would meet Cedric and Neville walking to Diagon Alley. Neville had gathered up seeds and cuttings from his grandmother's greenhouse at home, as well as from market-stalls in Diagon Alley, and they started teaching Opal about Herbology while replanting the greenhouse.

Cedric spent most of his first few days at Grimmauld Place getting his homework done; he gave Neville a lot of help, and the two boys, previously strangers, struck up a very natural friendship. Their room, home to Trevor and Cedric's owl, Blodeuwedd, soon became decorated with posters, and a record-player of Cedric's was used after 'bed-time' so the boys could listen to the records Jack said it was imperative they listen to, to start cultivating their love for all things Muggle rock-related.

Maia, as always, was a buzz of activity. She was still working on her sundresses, her designs for wintry clothing set aside, and she was delighting in surprising Opal with little dresses, and handmade shoes—though, truth be told, they had become a thing of the past inside Number Twelve, and especially at the Hobbit-hole. Remus said that Maia was so energetic she made the rest of them look like slackers.

When she wasn't writing notes during a lecture from strict Professor McGonagall, or painting complex diagrams on plants and flowers Professor Sprout brought to Grimmauld Place, she had other homework to do, writing essays, curling up in a corner of _Flourish and Blotts_ like usual, taking notes, and after a word with Professor Dumbledore, his Potions Master at Hogwarts, Professor Snape, had agreed to examine Maia at the end of the summer on her progress through Arsenius Jigger's textbook, and set her a series of essays she could owl to him as she completed them over the summer. Some of them were quite nasty, but engaging, and Maia learned a lot about different ingredient substitutions, methods and precautions from the intensive research she had to do for Snape's essays.

He gave her more homework than Professor Sprout, though considerably less than Professor McGonagall: and Maia asked Professor McGonagall, after her first lesson with the Transfiguration teacher, about careers options.

Sirius, Bill and even Cedric had mentioned that in O.W.L. year students received one-to-one interviews with their Head of House about possible career options, to help hone the choices of which subjects to continue at N.E.W.T. level. Maia had thought it a good idea to narrow down what she wanted to study before she got to Hogwarts, and Professor McGonagall brought her, the next evening, a stack of leaflets, the entire collection she had gathered from various occupations over the years, for Maia to look through. She had also given Maia the names of the Arithmancy, Astronomy and Ancient Runes professors, and Maia had sent Borgia with letters addressed to them, detailing her circumstances, Diane having tutored her since childhood, starting Hogwarts at sixteen this September. Madam Marchbanks said she could examine Maia into the fifth-year standard for History of Magic in lieu of the Hogwarts professor, a confused _ghost_, and sign her up for O.W.L. exams next June.

Maia had organised her days herself, to be highly-regimented due to the sheer amount of work she had to do, but she had a _lot_ of fun. She had never lived with so many people, never with _young_ people, and she mingled the traditions of her upbringing with the new daily routine here in Number Twelve, which evolved with each new person who came to live there.

Her homework wasn't just what Maia was working on. She was dedicated to her magical studies, but it was her extracurricular projects that really engaged her interest.

A postcard had been voted on, with six badge designs for _Radio Rock_—the name had stuck, simple and clear, and the afternoon after Maia had unveiled the studio, she sought out the printer Ailith had given her information on. While she watched, a magical printing-press, refined and beautiful, made of shining wood, almost like a giant printer, but running off magic and printing everything using magic, mixed with ink and paper manipulated to the way she wanted it, ran off a long sheet of her badge designs, and of the postcards.

She had a long conversation, showing the printer her paintings, and took a lot of notes, about having her fairytales published, as well as the cost involved for the two ideas she had, with what papers, finish, binding and dustcovers, pictures and special effects she wanted.

The printer cut each of the postcards and badge-designs individually, handing them over in two neat brown-paper boxes, and she went away smiling, carrying a huge catalogue, and thinking. Having discussed it with Sirius before heading to the printer, Maia took all but a handful of the postcards to Mal's Record Shack, where she handed them over to Mal, who had promised to hand one out to each of his customers to help promote the wireless station. Opal had a lot of fun with the badge-maker, and went around proudly bedecked in a badge of each design—the designs had each been printed with the especial decorative charms, so all they had to do was piece the badges together and pin them on. Ailith said she could get her Entertainment columnist friend at the _Prophet_ to do an article on the show when they finally aired.

Mrs Weasley and Mrs Lovett had taken over the alteration of second-hand robes, there were so few left to see to, and Maia was allowed to focus on sewing things for Opal, who adored the 2006 movie _Marie Antoinette_ for its costumes, and the little ballet slippers worn by the Queen during her coronation in _The Young Victoria_. She especially loved playing make-believe, having tea-parties, playing ninja hide-and-seek (which was hide-and-seek played in total darkness, during which Sirius was a terror, knowing the best hiding-places, with a tendency to jump out screaming, giving everyone a heart-attack), having water-fights, and watching _Doctor Who_ with Maia of an evening, when they would give the little girl an informal spelling lesson during games of _Scrabble_.

Maia was learning more and more about magic, and the wizarding culture into which she had been thrust, and was becoming more dissatisfied with certain aspects of it even while others absolutely delighted and enthralled her. She dedicated her thoughts to _Radio Rock_, to the history workbook she was piecing together, day by day, to her design for a pocket-wireless, and the cosmetic ideas she had had.

She constantly went back to her watercolour plans of a very handsome, palm-sized pocket wireless made of polished wood, and it was due to her desire to take with her to Hogwarts a small wireless on which she could listen to Sirius, possibly with the privacy of earphones, that she roped Sirius and Mr Weasley into showing her how to strip a wireless down to the spells and enchantments used to create it, and source the components used to piece together the shell of the wireless—the receiver, the speaker, the dials. The Wizarding Wireless Network didn't run on radio-waves; it was powered by magic, which made everything somehow a lot simpler.

Tonks and Bill had inspired one project, combined with her experimentation over a pâtisserie recipe substituting Fiawsberry Pears for grapefruit, and an idea how to indirectly collect funds for S.P.E.W. came from knitting a little rabbit friend for Opal. Considering how little time Maia spent in there, her new bedroom had quickly become the hub of all her creative projects: a new memo-board the same size as the other was affixed to one wall, and the floor was constantly spread with books, watercolours, informational leaflets and pages filled with intricate notes. She pinned things to the walls, set her record-player on a table and stacked records beneath and against it, and the dresser was piled with _stuff_, while her desk had returned to its true form, creatively chaotic.

Evidence of and plans for her many projects were everywhere; the half-dismantled wireless in the kitchen, with her many cookbooks; the badge-maker on the coffee-table in the den alongside seeds and plants she was helping Neville re-pot; freshly-printed photographs leaning atop the panelling ledge around her room with more fashion-designs for little dresses for Opal, more pages of notes on cosmetics; the second memo-board in her room was filling up with designs and fabric swatches and beadwork samples, braided cord and beaded tassel trims and buttons, cost calculations and cut-outs from magazines for advertising possibilities. Her dress-form was decorated with the half-finished construction of a new dress, the design leaning on the ledge beside it; her music-stand stood, showing the music Vittorio had given her, and her beautiful, painted pianoforte had been brought out. Bowls of fruit and a plate of cheese sat on her bedside table with a recipe, very artistic, beautiful photographs of the finished product and notes; a roll of film; patterns for a series of cute knitted cotton animals, rabbits, badgers, moles, foxes, bears, elephants, hippos, weasels and mice; and the printer's catalogue. Books were piled up in precarious columns, loosely organised by which assignment Maia was using them for as research.

When she had arrived in Grimmauld Place, it had been exactly as the name implied; grim. Grimy, oozing infestations and skittering with many-legged creatures. Now, it was unrecognisable; everything was warm with a rich golden glow. The sunshine threatening to parch the country dry splashed across the polished floors, illuminating whole rooms, every day; the smell of freshly-baked bread and the myriad different things Maia had been cooking up in the kitchen with experimental recipes altered from her originals, improved from other cooking-books and invented a while ago by Maia herself in spurts of culinary creativity, wafted around the house, combined with the near-constant sound of vibrant, cheerful music, and sometimes, Opal's beautiful laughter.

Neville and Cedric had been initiated into the evening tradition of films, cider, _Scrabble_ and popcorn, only now they sat in the den, and Sirius kept hinting that Maia should start the Muggle-awareness magazine she had discussed with Ailith a while ago. The boys, who had been raised strictly in the Wizarding world, were curious about Maia's life amongst Muggles; and her work on a cohesive history-book. She lent out records and books; Cedric seemed to have fallen in love with Charles Dickens, also a personal favourite of Maia's, and when Maia had to explain to the boys about the idea for a newsletter/magazine, because Sirius kept telling her she should do it, she was reminded of _Little Women_, in which the four sisters start their own 'secret' newspaper, with funny pen-names taken from a Dickens novel, dressing up in the attic den to compose their paper and read their articles aloud, with a banner, handmade badges and sipping tea, doing their knitting.

"It would give us something to do," Cedric smiled.

"I suppose it would," Maia said, glancing at Cedric and laughing softly.

"You know, Jack mentioned that he and the boys have their Battle of the Bands final in a few days," Maia said thoughtfully, grinning. "Perhaps one of us could write an article on them for the newspaper." Cedric smiled.

"Absolutely."

"We'd have to go out and see them live, of course," Maia smiled.

"We would," Cedric nodded, and Neville grinned; they had been discussing plans to go to the _Brass Jobberknoll_ with Tonks one night, to see The Puffskeins, one of Cedric's favourite bands.

"You know, you could recruit the Weasleys as journalists, too," Neville said, Trevor gulping on his shoulder where he was perched, while Neville potted several bulbs; they sat on the front-step, soaking up some sunshine at the end of the afternoon. Maia, Neville and Professor Sprout had plans to use the Floo Network to travel to Hogsmeade on Friday, then walk up to the greenhouses for an intensive lesson.

"The Weasleys?" Maia said thoughtfully.

"Yeah. They could write stuff for the newspaper too," Neville said. "Ginny's really good at writing, and I'd bet the twins would write some really funny stuff. They're hilarious." Cedric grinned in agreement, nodding, telling Maia about the twins having downed Aging Potions to speed up the process of getting to the age of seventeen so they could put their names in the Goblet of Fire.

"They sprouted these amazing white beards," Cedric chuckled. "About as fine as Professor Dumbledore's." Maia laughed; she was liking the sound of the Weasley twins the more she heard about them. Mrs Weasley had asked Sirius whether they had a decent book on Healing, just in case, which had made Maia rather alarmed, but Remus had then spent about twenty minutes telling her stories about the pranks the twins had pulled while he was a teacher at Hogwarts.

As Neville finished up with his potting, they returned inside, where Kreacher had left a pitcher of icy Pimms on a little table in the hall, and they paused to sip their drinks, their eyes getting used to the dark-gold of the panelled hall rather than the blistering sunshine of outside.

"I suppose, if we just did it for ourselves…it could be a lot of fun," Maia said, a grin spreading slowly across her face, already pondering a name and layout-design for a sort of sheet newsletter, like she had seen the March sisters use in the film adaptation of _Little Women_.

"And we could write articles on magical things, and you could help teach us about Muggle culture," Neville suggested, smiling. "That _Doctor_ _Who_ episode was really cool; we don't have anything like that."

"All we've got is _Martin Miggs, The Mad Muggle_," Cedric said, and Maia laughed.

"_What_?"

"It's a comic-book," Neville said. And, producing an old copy from his trunk, Maia was reduced to tears by the sheer ridiculousness of the comic. Like the books in Flourish and Blotts on Muggle Studies, wizards just had no clue whatsoever.

"So, when do you have to go and see Harry?" Cedric asked, a little later, while they were playing _Scrabble_ and watching through the studio-window as Sirius and Jack argued about music, waving records at each other and gesticulating. Jack flung a sweet at Sirius, who dropped his record and grabbed Jack in a headlock.

"Tomorrow," Maia said, looking down at her journal; it was normal for Jack and Sirius to play-fight. Usually they watched, tears of laughter streaming down their faces. But, based on previous conversations, with Ailith, with Sirius, and recently with Neville and Cedric, she was working on a heading for the newspaper, and needed to focus on her paints. "And Mrs Weasley said they would all be coming over on…Friday. I thought this weekend we could go to the Hobbit-hole. Spend a whole afternoon. Sirius said it's prime location for you, the Weasley twins and Harry to practice flying for Quidditch. And we could head to the beach, too."

"That sounds like fun," Neville said, glancing up from his Herbology book.

"How long will you be gone, visiting Harry?" Cedric asked curiously.

"Sirius says I just have to go, and say hello and introduce myself," Maia shrugged delicately. "Tell him a little of what's going on. I'll be briefed tomorrow, I expect!"

"My parents won't let me join the Order," Cedric said thoughtfully.

"Probably because you've not left school yet," Maia said sagely, dipping her paintbrush into the jar of red water.

"It's more than that," Cedric said, sighing softly. "I think they'd prefer I holed myself up here until September, and spend my life at home with them…until he's destroyed."

"Voldemort, you mean?" Maia said, and Neville choked on a Fudge Fly. "Sorry, Neville," she winced guiltily, thumping him on the back. "Sorry, I meant, You-Know-Who."

"Yeah," Cedric sighed. "They're afraid he'll want revenge."

"The way I've heard it, it always seems to be Harry who blasts the bajeezus out of Voldemort's plans," Maia said. "Always. So I'd say it's a pretty safe guess to assume he'll still be out for Harry's…well, blood." She remembered what Sirius had said, about Crouch Jr.'s testimony, about a potion Voldemort had created to restore himself to a body using the bone of his father, the flesh of his servant, and the blood of his enemy; _Harry_. Cedric looked glum about all of this, being made to stay safe in Grimmauld Place all summer. Maia guessed he wanted to be able to go about unfettered now that he could Apparate; she assumed he'd want to visit his friends, see his _girlfriend_—because he definitely had one; a boy as good-looking as Cedric couldn't _not_ have a girlfriend. Maia had seen her photograph on his bedside-cabinet.

* * *

><p>Square.<p>

Sirius would hate it.

Privet Drive was basically everything Maia hated about the world boiled down into a cul-de-sac of big, square houses with big, ultra-Conservative square owners who all drove the same big, square diesel-guzzling car; evidence of cheating on the hosepipe-ban abounded, and she saw a group of middle-class boys dressed like 'gangstas' on the corner smoking cigarettes and throwing stones at children riding their bikes to the playground.

One of them had been morbidly obese and seemed to have been their ringleader; Sirius mentioned this was probably Harry's bullying cousin Dudley.

Maia had been told that Harry lived in number four, Privet Drive, by Mrs Figg; she had Apparated to Magnolia Crescent, Mrs Figg's place of residence, to let her know that Maia was going to see Harry. Professor Dumbledore had informed Mrs Figg that Maia would be visiting Harry on and off throughout the summer, at least until Harry could be moved to Headquarters. Maia had stayed only long enough to giggle softly and try not to step on the beautiful little kittens who swarmed around her feet, rubbing up against her ankles and purring; and if anything happened, Mrs Figg said, Maia should tip off Mr Tibbles, who would be patrolling Little Whinging as surely as Mr Lovett was.

Adjusting her sunglasses, and the sinuous chain of her tiny bag—which she had customised with an Undetectable-Extending Charm, highly useful, quite tricky—Maia walked up the neat front path to the glass-paned door of Number Four. She had to say, the hydrangea bush was amazing, though as she glanced back at it, standing on the doorstep, she thought she saw an impression on the ground behind the bush, directly below the windowsill. As if someone had been lying there.

She sighed and knocked on the door. A moment later, a tall, very thin, horse-faced woman with blonde hair and a very long neck answered; she was dressed with a floral apron over her twinset and pearls. She wore a pair of marigolds, and a strong aura of _Cif_ cleaning-cream emanated from her.

Maia, prepared by Mrs Weasley as to how the Dursleys treated their nephew, forced a soft smile.

"Can I help you?" Mrs Dursley asked waspishly. She narrowed her eyes. "Are you a friend of Diddy's?" Maia heard movement, and glanced beyond Mrs Dursley, to the staircase, halfway down which a skinny boy with messy black hair and a distinct air of neglect was tumbling.

"Actually, I'm not," she said, smiling at Harry. "I heard Harry was back from school; I haven't seen him in ages and we'd made plans to meet up and go to the park. There you are!" She eyed him up; his t-shirt was baggy and faded, his jeans tattered and too-big, the soles of his shoes peeling. "You ready to go?"

"Er…" He goggled at her. Vivid emerald eyes shot from her to Mrs Dursley, who now looked quite appalled, to Maia. She slid her sunglasses down her nose, winked at him, and pushed them back into place with her forefinger.

"Come on, we'll go for lunch. You look like you haven't been fed in a week," she said, which was true; Harry had the pinched, somewhat unhealthy look of someone who had grown a lot in a very short time. He was nearly fifteen, after all; most of the boys Maia knew were going through a similar growth-spurt. Harry slipped past his aunt, shooting her a half-grin of delighted incredulity, and Maia shot Mrs Dursley a look, before turning on her heel and starting off down the path.

"So… Playground?" Maia said, glancing at Harry.

"Just through here," Harry said, indicating a small, sunny alley. Maia reached into her bag, noticing that Harry's wand was stuck in the waist of his jeans, and she smiled, drawing out the fat envelope Sirius had given her to pass on.

"What's this?" Harry asked, glancing at it.

"Letters of reference," Maia chuckled. "And Mad-Eye's going to be very annoyed that you didn't check my identity before you left the house, you know."

"I recognised you from the photo Professor Lupin gave me," Harry said, and Maia shot him a look.

"Harry, you brewed Polyjuice Potion in your second year," she laughed.

"Oh," Harry grimaced guiltily.

"Want to ask me something?"

"Okay…who recently got married in the royal family?"

"Prince William," Maia smiled. "To Kate Middleton. On the twenty-ninth of April last year. We watched it at my friend's house. We all got dressed up and had afternoon-tea."

"Oh. Okay," Harry said, shooting her a slight grin.

"So, are you going to read Snuffles' letter?" Maia asked, dawdling beside Harry as they made their way through the alley, and he tore open the envelope. Walking seemingly on autopilot, Harry navigated blindly through Little Whinging, until they had reached a playground.

"Anything good?" Maia asked, glancing at Harry as he folded the letter and tucked it neatly back into its envelope, which he pushed into his jeans pocket.

"Snuffles just said…you'd explain stuff," Harry said, glancing at her. "He said I should ask you to tell me your…well, your story. That'll help explain."

"Ah," Maia said softly, nodding.

"But you told Hermione a bit of it in your first letter to her," Harry said, glancing at her. "Snuffles never mentioned he had a niece."

"He never knew," Maia said, shrugging delicately. "Apparently, when he ran away from home at sixteen, he left his brother behind and never had further contact." Maia glanced at Harry. "My father died about fifteen years ago, so…" Harry glanced at her.

"So…your mum figured out Snuffles is innocent, and got in contact?" he asked. "Did Snuffles visit her, when Dumbledore told him to contact 'the old crowd'?"

"My mother died when I was two," Maia said, glancing at Harry. "The war."

"Oh," Harry said softly. Maia shrugged delicately.

"So my great-aunt raised me. Or great-great-great…numerous-times great-aunt raised me," she said, punting a pebble on the ground. It chipped and skittered away. "She was a Squib."

"Was?"

"She died, too, just a few weeks ago," Maia said, sighing softly. "But she left me in Professor Dumbledore's guardianship. Snuffles offered to take me in, and that's where I've been ever since, with him, and Remus."

"Professor Lupin said something along those lines," Harry said, frowning thoughtfully. He glanced up at Maia, looking almost angry. "How come I'm not there?"

"I have no idea," Maia said honestly. "All I know is Professor Dumbledore wants you here for a few weeks, then we'll execute a rescue mission. I'm thinking up codenames and tactics." Harry cracked a grin. "I can't really talk about…where Snuffles is. Literally, can't speak it. But he's safe, and we're safe with him."

"How long have you been there?" Harry asked.

"Nearly three weeks," Maia said thoughtfully. She smiled softly. "We've been making Snuffles' house fit for wizard habitation." She had her orders from Sirius; tell Harry that he was safe, that they would be coming to get him soon, that the people who were trying to reform the Ministry before Voldemort's next attempt at a return were watching out for him, and that she, Maia, would be keeping him posted if anything huge happened, "but as it is, the most there is to tell you is that we've got witches and wizards involved in the process of reforming the Ministry, cleansing it of the corruption left over from the War."

"How?" Harry asked, as they reached the playground, which featured only two small children with their mum.

"Well," Maia said, leading the way over to the swings, always her favourite playground apparatus when she was little; she sank down on one swing, and Harry on another, wrapping one arm around the chain, "Professor Dumbledore, I think, is trying to help wizards start to right all the wrongs they've committed in the past. Werewolf segregation, expelling the giants from Britain, denying goblins their rights… Eradicating elf-slavery." Harry shot her a quirky look.

"We were afraid you sounded a lot like Hermione," he said, chuckling, and Maia grinned.

"She had a good idea, starting that society. The practicality of some of her aims is a bit dubious, considering her starting-point, but I think she'll get there, if she's dedicated," Maia said thoughtfully. "I'm concerned by other things in the wizarding world. Like the risks of owl-post."

"If all these people are trying to make changes in the Ministry…why haven't I read anything in the _Prophet_?" Harry asked. Maia laughed.

"Harry, they've only been recalled for about a month!" she smiled. "Thanks to you and Cedric, Professor Dumbledore was able to assemble them right after you foiled Voldemort's latest plan for return; but these things take time. It's all Wizengamot legislation, and with the current Cabinet sitting in office, Fudge and his Senior Undersecretary Umbridge making hell for half-breeds… It's not going to be easy, but doing the right thing never is." She sighed, swinging gently, and Harry leaned his cheek against the chain, looking glum.

"Why can't I help?" he asked. Maia laughed again.

"Harry, you _did_ help!" she smiled. "You stopped Voldemort from returning; you saved Cedric Diggory's life; you made sure Professor Dumbledore knew Voldemort's plan the second you got back from that graveyard; you made sure he and the others heard the testimony of Barty Crouch Jr."

"You know about all of that?" Harry asked, glancing at her.

"Of course. Snuffles has had nothing to do but clean and talk for the last three weeks," Maia grinned. She glanced at Harry, taking in his round glasses, his unkempt hair—which she recognised from photographs of Sirius with James Potter as young men—his general air of skinniness. "You're just as bad as him; you both look like you've been to the same workhouse as Oliver Twist." Harry laughed hollowly, glancing down at his unkempt appearance. "Is it true they only ever give you your obese cousin's old clothes?" Harry nodded. "And they regularly starve you for misbehaving?"

"Ritual starvation," Harry sighed. "Trying to starve the magic out of me."

"And they made you sleep in a cupboard until you were eleven?" Maia asked, appalled. Harry nodded. Maia glanced at him; Sirius had mentioned that James and Lily Potter had left a small fortune to Harry in their Gringott's vault, and she remembered that James Potter had been wealthy enough not to have to work, and be able to support not just himself and his wife and small son, but his best-friend, Remus. Yet in the four years Harry had been part of the Wizarding world, he'd never bothered to exchange some Galleons for pounds sterling and bought himself some clothes that fit?

"You're such a _bloke_," she laughed, pushing her sunglasses back up her nose. "Four years, you never bought yourself some proper clothes?"

"Aunt Petunia never takes me to the shops with her anymore," Harry shrugged. "I…don't get to travel."

"No," Maia sighed, thinking of what Mrs Weasley had said of the summer her twin sons had gone on a joyride with their father's enchanted Ford Anglia to spring Harry from the makeshift cell the Dursleys had made of his room, affixing bars over his window and locking his door from the outside. She glanced at Harry. "Don't worry about that; I'll pick you up some things, if you want."

"You don't have to—"

"I know I don't. Just think of it as your new pseudo-cousin taking care of you," Maia said, glancing at him, and Harry's eyes widened. "You _are_ Snuffles' godson. And since I'm his niece, you'd be sort of my cousin." She grinned softly. "Family's got to stay together, take care of each other. Even as eccentric a bunch of outcasts as we are."

Harry laughed. "Yeah," he nodded, chuckling softly.

"So, what's your favourite colour?" Maia asked. "Do you prefer _dark_ denim or natural? Faded or distressed, or neat?"

"I'm sure whatever you pick out will be fine," Harry said, looking slightly uncomfortable but pleased.

"What size shoe do you wear?" Maia asked, glancing down. "I'm afraid you're on your own for _knickers_." Harry laughed.

"Thanks," he chuckled.

"Maybe you should have your eyes tested, too," Maia said thoughtfully, frowning at Harry. "How long have you had those glasses?"

"Since I was six," Harry sighed, his shoulders slumping.

"Nine years, your family never had you checked since?" Maia said, staring. He glanced at her, and Maia sighed; she didn't need a guide to decipher that look. "Maybe we can do that when you come to stay… Anyway, is there anything else you want to ask?"

Harry shrugged. "_Is_ there anything I can do to help?"

"Yes," Maia nodded. "This is from Snuffles; _don't_ use magic, no matter how much you're tempted. Only in the very deepest emergency. And no running away… And if you're wondering whether you should put something in a letter, _don't_."

"Okay," Harry sighed, his shoulders falling again.

"I know you mean can you do something _actively_ helpful," Maia said softly, glancing at him. "But that's really the best thing you can do. And listening to Snuffles' pirate wireless station."

"Snuffles has a pirate wireless station?!" Harry gaped, grinning incredulously.

"He kept moaning—a bit like you—about not being able to do anything to help," Maia smirked at the look on Harry's face. "And I saw broadcasting equipment in Dervish and Banges in Diagon Alley." She tugged a postcard and a handful of badges out of her bag. "Here. He hasn't gone on-air yet; he, Jack and Vittorio are still working out when each gets to have a session."

"Jack and Vittorio?"

"Members of the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_; they're helping," Maia smiled. "There's no wireless station dedicated to rock-n-roll, so I thought Snuffles could start one, and could mouth off about important things that nobody else is talking about, and play decent music—Wizard _and_ Muggle; you should see Snuffles' record collection, it's immense."

"Isn't that dangerous?" Harry asked, looking uncertain.

"After fourteen years, I find it hard to believe someone will recognise Snuffles' voice," Maia said, glancing at Harry. "And anyway, where he is, Snuffles is protected even from the Ministry. He's under the Fidelius Charm." Harry glanced at the postcard, grinning slightly, and examined each of the badges.

"I don't have a wireless," he said quietly, squinting in the sun as he glanced at her. "They're _huge_, and expensive."

"Yeah," Maia sighed. "I'm working on a prototype for a pocket-wireless, a portable one you can plug headphones into." She pulled her diary out of her bag, flipping it open to the pages on her wireless designs, spreading her palm out flat. "About the size of your palm, maybe smaller."

"That would be cool," Harry grinned.

"Snuffles and Mr Weasley are still helping me strip the wireless at home," Maia said thoughtfully. "And I'm running up the suppliers of the fiddly receptor bits, and I met a wizard carpenter in Diagon Alley who I think could make the wood casings, if I gave him the design." She swung, kicking her legs for more height, gazing over the playground. The small family were leaving through the gate. "Maybe I can make two prototypes—give one to you to test out."

"Cool!" Harry grinned. A moment passed in silence, and Harry glanced at her.

"If you're part of the Order, can I join?" Harry asked, glancing at her. Maia laughed.

"I'm not part of the Order. I was just asked to come and pop in every few days because I can Apparate, and I can fit in with Muggles," Maia chuckled softly. "I just cook dinner for everyone after meetings. Snuffles needs fattening up. And he's not been accustomed to eating lovely things, so I've been making my old pâtisserie standbys, my aunt's favourite cakes. Speaking of which, here."

Aware of the ritual starvation the Dursleys inflicted on Harry, Maia had put together a survival pack to give to Harry. Out of her little bag, she pulled out a medium-sized brown-card gable box she had purchased from the stationery shop in Diagon Alley, and which she had _improved_. Harry stared at her little bag. "Where did—How—?"

"Undetectable Extending Charms," Maia chuckled softly at his expression.

"Right," Harry said, looking rather stunned.

"It's not much to look at from the outside," Maia said, handing him the box, "but inside there's something of everything I've got in my kitchen."

Dubiously, Harry took the box, opening the flaps, and then stared into it. "_Whoa_."

She had filled the box with fresh artisan rolls filled with numerous combinations of cold-cuts, chutneys and piccalilli, as well as different salads, homemade sausage-rolls, individual quiches, cheese-straws, _coq au vin_ skewers and a small basket of fresh _gougéres_. Several loaves of fresh bread; a jar of honey and one of fresh strawberry jam (with a bread-knife and a butter-knife, so Harry wasn't accused of thieving from his aunt's meticulous kitchen) had been added, as well as bottles of mixed cordial and water, a six-pack of Butterbeers, and sweets. Not wanting his godson to miss out on any of his niece's culinary creations, Sirius had been in charge of stuffing several cake-tins: a selection of petit-fours and a chocolate-hazelnut loaf, little Moroccan glasses of Maia's special _mousse au chocolat_, two others filled with minty, berry ice-cream made from crème fraîche and honey, a bowl of fresh fruit, Madeleines, some of her boozy brownies, a handful of chocolate _macarons_ and a collection of éclairs filled with crème pâtisserie and iced in various flavour combinations she had been experimenting with, such as gillywater and blood-orange; Fiawsberry pear and star-anise icing with almond praline; lemon ones iced with violet fondant, and the classic chocolate ones Remus absolutely _loved_.

Mrs Weasley had taught Maia charms that kept bottles of liquid chilled, and meat dishes warm until they were consumed, and breads and pastries would remain as fresh as the day Maia had made them. Mentioning this, Harry said, "Have you met the Weasley twins yet?"

"No. They're supposed to come over on Friday. They're staying with us in London. Bill says they're insane," Maia said, grinning with anticipation.

"They are," he chuckled. "You reminded me of them." Harry told her about the Weasley twins' plan to start their own joke-shop. He told her that the Weasleys had never believed the explosions coming from the twins' bedroom had ever meant anything more than they loved the noise; but they had been _inventing_ things, and it was the expression on Maia's face when she had spoken of the pocket-wireless that had made Harry think of the twins.

"Well, I'll bring you refills for the box when I come and see you next," Maia promised. "That lot should feed an army, but you're a teenaged boy, and I know it's equivalent."

"Thanks!" Harry grinned.

"There are some magazines, and back-issues of the _Prophet_ in there, too," Maia said, smiling. "There's just one more thing, before I go. Snuffles asks that you get back to Number Four before dark each night… Precaution, you know." Harry's shoulders slumped. "Hey, at least you can leave the house," she said softly, and Harry conceded that with a nod and a sigh.

"Alright," he sighed.

"Good. I'd better get back," Maia smiled. "Snuffles will want a report on how you're doing." Harry cracked a grin. "See you in a few days."

"Thanks again," Harry said, indicating the box.

"You're welcome," she shrugged.

"Bye," he grinned, and Maia winked, glanced around, and Disapparated.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Step away from the éclairs!"

"I can't have one?" Sirius asked, gazing imploringly at her, hand paused to take an éclair iced with pale-blue fondant, filled with lemon crème pâtisserie.

"No!" Maia said indignantly. "I've _just_ finished piping the icing onto them."

"They look amazing," Sirius pouted hungrily, bending to examine the éclairs close up, decorated with tiny sugared violets. "How was Little Whinging?"

"Square," Maia yawned. Sirius chuckled.

"How was Harry?"

"Underfed, under-loved, and under the impression he's about as useless as you think you are," Maia said, glancing at Sirius. "He wants to know why he can't do anything to help."

"He _did_—"

"I told him!" Maia laughed, raising her hands defensively. "I told him about people trying to stamp out corruption in the Ministry. And I gave him food. And I'm going to go to the shops at the weekend and buy him some new clothes, because he's a typical _man_ and won't replace something until it's literally falling off his back, and all of his clothes were about five sizes too big." She handed Sirius one of the éclairs. Harry wasn't the only one malnourished; she had been right, talking to Harry, about Sirius not being used to eating lovely things. Every meal was an exciting event for him, and Maia never wanted to disappoint him, spending a lot of time thinking up delicious meals and sweet things for him to enjoy. Because he would only live once, and he had already missed fourteen years of his life. "Anyway, how were things over here?"

"Fine," Sirius said, around a mouthful of éclair. He raised his eyebrows, glanced at the treat, and pointed at it, nodding, as he grunted some sort of sound of approval. Maia smirked.

"Did you get _any_ work done at all?" she asked. With an immense swallow, Sirius stared at her, as if incensed.

"How dare you! We have been slaving away like house-elves!" he declared indignantly.

"I'm sure," she rolled her eyes. "I told Harry about _Radio Rock_."

"Oh, yeah?"

"He doesn't have a wireless," Maia sighed, dusting off her hands. "I told him about my idea for a pocket-wireless. I might get stuck in with that, actually. See if I can't make up a prototype."

"You're going to wear yourself out, you know," Sirius said, licking crème patissiere off of his thumb. "I think you're going to try to do too much…"

"I'm used to taking on too much," Maia reminded him. Her entire childhood had consisted of Diane giving her lessons more fit for a grown adult, in complicated languages written back-to-front, mind-breaking equations, complex Ancient Runes, multiple languages, exquisitely detailed embroidery stitches, memorising how to make different dough and pastries, learning historical facts off by heart.

"You only live once," Maia sighed. She yawned. The sun and the heat were working against her; instead of working her plans for a pocket-wireless, she went up to her room, heard enough to know Neville and Cedric were laughing in the den listening to music, and tucked herself in under a soft, light sheet, having a mid-afternoon nap.

She dozed, thinking about Harry. She had read about him in several historical tomes, and listening to Sirius tell stories about him had made her feel like she knew him, at least a little. She got the impression, though, that he wasn't as much a daredevil as Sirius would believe he was; she did believe he had a somewhat compulsive need to save people, perhaps having stemmed from being completely and utterly abused and neglected as a child. It was amazing he had turned out so normal.

Both orphaned as babies, Maia had thought they might form a bond. But they were just two teenagers, who shared that same pain but had been too young when they were orphaned to know anything else. She drifted off into a blissful nap, and when Neville came in to gently shake her awake, she awoke refreshed, warm and relaxed.

She sat in the den, going through her fairytale watercolours. With the record-player on, Sirius was dancing with Opal, who was giggling softly, her glitter jelly-sandals sparkling in the sunshine, and Maia laughed with Neville while she set up her paints on the coffee-table; Cedric was writing a letter to his girlfriend, and, it being later in the afternoon, Ailith and Tonks had already arrived, were sat comfortably on the big leather sofa, each with a chilled glass of Pimm's, smiling and chatting with Remus, smiling at Sirius as he played with Opal, almost tumbling to his death—or at the very least a broken ankle—as Crookshanks purred, rubbing up against Sirius' shins. It was a lovely atmosphere, sunny and warm, and watching Opal, the way her golden ringlets shone and sparkled and bounced, Maia smiled and took out her camera, thoughts turning to Goldilocks. She taped a large piece of A3 watercolour paper to her artist's board, and started painting.

Each of her heroines were extraordinary in appearance; her Snow White was Asian; her Twelve Dancing Princesses lived in their father's Middle-Eastern palace in the centre of a vibrant city filled with colourful souks and perfume markets, from different mothers, each exquisite, wearing a mixture of Middle-Eastern robes, _Marie-Antoinette_ gowns, beautiful headdresses, hennins and crowns; the Frog Princess was a stunning golden-eyed, cocoa-skinned girl with an hourglass figure, from El Dorado, who wore a lot of violet, sunset-fuchsia and gold jewellery; her Cinderella was a freckled Malayan with sapphire eyes, at the ball wearing an 1880s ruffled gown of periwinkle, with an exquisite diamond choker and a rope of pearls; her Sleeping Beauty, a cinnamon-eyed, rose-cheeked brunette with softly waving hair and elegant hands; Bluebeard's last wife was a lithe, copper-skinned, curly raven-haired woman who wore red lipstick; the princess in the _Wild Swans_, a violet-eyed, cinnamon-skinned honey-blonde; Hansel and Gretel's mother, a staggeringly beautiful Native-American woman; the princess in _The White Snake_ wore a diaphanous silvery veil over her face, held in place by a wreath of vibrant golden-yellow poppies, not obscuring her honey-brunette curls wrapped with gold threads and strings of pale-pink quartz, or her rose-pink lips.

At the beginning of her GCSE coursework, she had made a list of all of the fairytales she had wanted to do; now, she noted each scene she had painted for which story, and the ones she still had yet to do. Her handsome princes were unusual, too; a green-eyed, ebony fairy-prince in Thumbelina; olive-skinned stunners with shining black hair in _Wild Swans_; her cursed amphibian in _The Frog Prince_ was a fuchsia poison-dart frog in El Dorado (the princess had a pet armadillo, for fun!); her Beast returned to his true form of a sensual white-blonde, black-browed, emerald-eyed hunk of broad-shouldered perfection, while her wheat-blonde Beauty was resplendent in Renaissance gowns inspired by _The Borgias_, in tones of almond, champagne, pink, prettiest lilac and deepest, richest red; Sleeping Beauty's betrothed was a carefree auburn with curly hair, suntanned arms and sky-blue eyes; the Little Mermaid's prince was an olive-skinned, broad-shouldered man with stunning golden eyes and shining multihued brown hair; the heroic huntsman in _Little Red Riding Hood_ was a burly young redhead with massive arms and a sweet smile. The suitors to the Twelve Dancing Princesses ranged from golden-blonde to elegant black-haired Middle-Eastern men, curly brunettes with freckles, or with high cheekbones and skin like mahogany, or fair-skinned redheads with warm brown eyes, violet-eyed, olive-skinned Mediterranean men.

Maia had _loved_ the variation in each of her fairytales. In the characters themselves, in the different times and backgrounds she had set them in, her use of colour and the tiny details, like food, fashion, mingling jewellery, shoes, decorations, even the architecture in some of her stories. To move _Hansel and Gretel_ up to the northern territory in early-colonial America? Unheard of, especially with a Native mother. And everyone now only ever envisioned the _Disney_ princesses when they thought of the Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast.

She had been working on her own paintings for _Little Red Riding Hood_—two versions: she loved the concepts for both the child and the adolescent, and liked the brunette teenager with rose-coloured lips, and a lock of curls that fell rather roguishly into her laughing eyes, and the details she got to paint for the child version of Little Red wandering through the flower-strewn woods to her grandmother's rose-covered cottage, her cute, short hair held from her face with a red ribbon—and for _Rapunzel_, with her shining garnet-red hair, the dark freckles on her nose and her deep navy eyes.

Ailith had suggested Maia edit the fairytales, ignoring the sanitised modern versions, to make them her own. To add details, strip preconceptions; she had done so with her earlier paintings, especially for _Sleeping Beauty_, which she had set during the Restoration; and Twelve Dancing Princesses, which she had set in a vibrant desert-city in the Middle East; Hansel and Gretel in early-colonial America; The Frog Prince, in pre-Cortez South America; The Little Mermaid, ancient Greece, with the underwater grotto sparkling with sunken treasures, marble statues of goddesses; Beauty and the Beast, in Renaissance Italy, after seeing a picture of the Vatican fresco of Lucrezia Borgia.

Maia had fleshed out details of Rapunzel, which the Grimms' original version left sorely lacking: in her version, Rapunzel's parents were incredibly wealthy nobles, the rampion-leaves the wife desired during her pregnancy falling inside the taboo borders of a witch's land, and the prince of the realm, hearing of the lost daughter while hunting with Rapunzel's father, had decided to find the girl born with hair the same hue of shining garnets as her famously beautiful mother.

She was still working on studies and settings for _Rapunzel_, and she brought out her paints, working on studies for the prince, whom in her mind was a young, energetic prince, excited about the idea of finding the lost lady, with his own hair grown long from searching, shining in beautiful treacle waves to his shoulders, wearing leather trousers, a sword belted with brown leather around his hips, and a shining ring on his finger gifted from Rapunzel's mother, a show of her faith that he will find her daughter—bringing in a slight aura of the courtly love of Arthurian knights' quests.

Leaving the paintings to dry, she picked up her knitting. She had been working on creating a knitted menagerie of different animals, giving them all tights—sometimes patterned, all with little shoes in contrasting colours, sometimes with 'Converses'—and either a dress with beautiful patterns, or a jumper and shorts.

Crookshanks had curled up in a patch of sun on the sofa, purring, and eyed the ball of yarn in Maia's lap before bunching up, and leaping onto the free chair at the large round table, which was now no longer bare and polished but _covered_ in stuff, stuff belonging to Cedric, and to Neville, but mostly to Maia. Jack and Vittorio were in the music-room; in between songs, Maia could hear Vittorio's violin, and Jack on the piano. Kreacher was dozing in the sun, and Trevor gulped from the depths of one of the plant-pots. Popcorn was scattered across the carpet, and many glasses littered the room, providing everyone with drinks during the heatwave; a _Scrabble_ game lay half-completed on the coffee-table, with sweets, _Gambol & Jape's_ products, someone's post, an _Evening Prophet_, some books, a battered old chess set and a _Jenga_ tower; it was one of Ailith's old favourite games.

Bill had called it "the quiet before the storm": Tomorrow, the Weasleys would make their entrance in Grimmauld Place.

And Maia was _thoroughly_ excited. If Bill's tales about his twin-brothers were anything as accurate as the truth, she couldn't wait to meet them. She had heard that Ron liked to play chess, and that Ginny was the only girl in the Weasley family born for generations, and had once been possessed by Lord Voldemort. Bill had said, oh so ominously, "You'd better be prepared."

Tomorrow was going to be busy; she and Neville were going to Hogwarts to spend a day in the greenhouses, and then the Weasleys would arrive. More than that, Sirius was going to do his first wireless broadcast. Exciting stuff.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Well, what d'you think? Please review and tell me!


	16. Chapter 16

**A.N.**: Hello! Besides Puck in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, who uses 'Love-in-Idleness' fabled to have been created by accident by Cupid, can anybody think of any mythical character who used/created love-potions? I'm trying to do product-designs for the twins' love-potions! And I can only think of Tristan and Isolde, and Hercules' wife using the 'love-potion' the centaur Nessus gave her upon his death, and Hercules died from the poison! So, anyone remember any mythical figures who famously used love-potions?

Also, being a fierce supporter of the anti-Fleur movement, does anybody have any ideas for a character I can pair Bill with? If you look up _mellowUKgal_ on Pinterest and click on the 'Sun, Star, Moonlight' board, there is a photograph of the _stunning_ Natasha Poly, and I would love a female character inspired by her appearance for Bill; I just love the glittery suit-jacket, the earrings, her eyeliner! She looks like she could be a wealthy Gringott's employee, or someone from the Ministry.

I'm going to put together an 'Eldest of the Pleiades' board on Pinterest soon, so stay tuned. All of my inspirational images will be in one place for you to peruse.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_16_

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><p>Maia didn't like the Floo Network. Travelling by fire; <em>bad<em>. Coughing and spluttering, glad she didn't suffer from asthma, Maia patted ash from her clothing as she walked alongside Neville and Professor Sprout through the Hogwarts grounds.

Then Maia saw it. Hogwarts.

A towering mass of turrets tumbling in a large campus down the cliff on which it was perched, hundreds of windows glittering like vivid diamonds in the intense sun scorching the earth; banners unfurled in a sports stadium caught in the breeze, and a large and beautiful lake rippled at the foot of a gentle slope that led up to a great set of oak front-doors. The sky was a blazing forget-me-not, touched here and there by soft-as-silk clouds that drifted past idly, dissipating gently; the trees all around swayed gently as if to a dance orchestrated by the gentle breeze that made the tall grasses and wildflowers shiver. The natural path had been tramped by thousands of feet for a thousand years, and it wended its way through the grounds, around the lake, past the skirts of the forest, past a little cabin with a large vegetable-patch beside it, and, finally, a great spread of walled gardens full to bursting with vegetable-patches and orchards.

Beyond these, the greenhouses. A series of large and glittering greenhouses spread one after the other, some of them overgrown with greenery, the windows at the top of the roof spread with canopies that trailed down the sides of the greenhouses; Maia could see vibrant colours through the glass of some of the greenhouses, other windowpanes glowed strangely, and she could _hear_…giggles, mousy chatters and squeaks, deep, guffawing laughs.

"Right! We're in Greenhouse One today!" Professor Sprout beamed. "Thought we'd go over what we've been studying, Maia. Neville, you can help Maia any time she gets stuck, you know Greenhouse One back to front." Neville grinned embarrassedly, hefting his bag higher on his shoulder; they had both brought notebooks, paper, ink and, in Maia's case, watercolour paints, as well as textbooks, trowels, dragon-hide gloves and, especially, high-factor sun-cream. Maia had also brought her camera, to take photographs of the plants she had up to this point only studied out of _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_.

As soon as they entered Greenhouse One, the temperature, already bordering uncomfortable, became downright unbearable. Maia was glad she had put on one of the shorter, thinner cotton sundresses she had sewn, because it was going to get _sweaty_.

Greenhouse One was like no kind of greenhouse Maia had ever stepped into. It was absolutely incredible; the Herbology emporium in Diagon Alley paled in comparison. The temperature inside soared, the humidity too, and she regretted having to pull her hair up into a handkerchief, exposing her neck. Everything was vibrant with life, sparkling, giggling, squeaking and hopping, colours blazing, scents so heady she could have been transported into a tropical paradise.

They walked down aisles of deep flowerbeds filled with the most amazing trees and bushes Maia had ever seen: a cherry-tree was blossoming, had fresh spring buds, and was also heavy with fruit, something that never occurred in nature; a white-barked tree with a twisted trunk had the most vividly scarlet foliage she had ever seen, and amid the leaves were cricket-ball sized fruits the shade and lustre of pearls, but fuzzy like peaches, and little clusters of pretty white flowers grew around them. A plant with jagged, purple-and-green leaves at least five feet tall hid a sort of jug-orchid of orangey-fuchsia with a lid of vibrant green and a plume of yellow-tipped white antennae. Another tree, further down from the ever-blossoming, fruit-heavy cherry tree was another tree, this one as twisted as the scarlet-leaved one, but had no foliage, the sinuous boughs heavy with furry green fruits that resembled avocados, and violently orange knobbly fruits like anemone shells.

Scattered around the greenhouse, as well as the other deep flowerbeds, were potting benches overflowing with other plants of all kinds, shapes, colours, scents and magical attributes. As in the Herbology emporium in Diagon Alley, Greenhouse One was filled with normal plants, like gooseberry bushes and the herbs and spices that were needed for potions; but then there were cacti with spiked leaves that looked like they were made entirely of the most flawless, sparkling diamonds; other cactus varieties with brilliant blue blossoms that were furry and actually erupted something that quite resembled a little bird, chirping and twittering; there were plants that shivered, their frilly scarlet blossoms whirling like a flamenco dancer's skirts; the same enormous sunflowers the size of dinner-plates Maia had seen in the shop in Diagon Alley that tittered with voices like chattering mice; vibrantly-coloured miniature toadstools that hopped about and squeaked excitedly; there was a bushy tree on which enormous blue strawberries the size of watermelons appeared to pulsate, something sparkly and fuchsia oozing from each little seed-pocket; there were delicate, feathery plants with tiny white flowers that seemed to shimmer and twinkle like stars, hidden in the darkest recesses of the leaves nearest the soil; a beautiful plant with veined purple leaves the size of elephant-ears shaded them, the leaves creating most of the canopy, as well as several climbing plants in odd colours with strange spines and suckers; there was a tray of very unique, incredibly rare flowers of grown glass, forget-me-nots and tiny crocuses, little yellow-trumpeted white daffodils, bluebells, yellow ranunculus, double-petal freesias and sweet-peas, that chinkled and chimed as the breeze touched them, ringing like the sound of someone running their finger around the edge of a glass, and which, Professor Sprout and the lady who had a stall covered with them in Diagon Alley, said grew in the glacial pass of Kenya (which thoroughly confused Maia; a _glacial_ pass in _Kenya_?); there were great daffodils the size of trumpets that actually did honk musically; flesh-eating pink fungi; an enormous bush of hydrangea blossoms, that, on closer inspection, looked to be made up of clusters of hundreds of tiny, fluttering butterfly-like petals; boughs heavy with beautiful orchids the size of Maia's face that sang like a cherubic choir; dog-roses that wolf-whistled as they passed; vibrant plumeria that giggled coquettishly, and seemed to have tiny, smiling faces amongst their petals; a bush heavily-laden with fruit like oversized pink-currants, which dripped something that hissed and frothed when it touched the dragon-dung manure covering the beds; flowers that looked like dandelion-seeds, glowing and pulsating radiant light like the moon; a plant that resembled mint in many respects, but had large blossoms that looked like iridescent bubbles; a dish of water from which billowing diaphanous leaves of dazzling icy-lilac rippled up to the ceiling, as if caught in the gentlest of sea tides; clumps of vividly-coloured fungi that more than resembled coral formations of the Great Barrier Reef; saucer-sized daisies sprinkled with honey-coloured sap that had already caught several bluebottles and an unfortunate pearl-coloured moth; and—

"_Ow_!" Maia yelped, jumping and jerking her hand away from several normal-looking flowered plants.

"Mind the fanged geraniums!" Professor Sprout called. "They're teething!" She didn't see the look Maia shot her, the two bite-marks pressed to her lips to stop them bleeding. As they reached the other end of the greenhouse, Maia saw something with vines covered in tiny, multi-coloured suction-cups and dark, evil-looking black spines wrap itself around one of the wooden posts of a chalkboard, slowly dragging it closer to the flowerbed, and nearby, a small potting-bench featured several little terracotta and china pots filled with flowers and plants of different shapes, some tall, some trailing, some sturdy-looking and shiny, some diaphanous and soft like thistledown, and several trays of seedlings that seemed to make the manure glow phosphorescently.

A giant purplish-orange Venus-Flytrap, dripping with sparkling sapphire sap, was chomping on a grubby scrap of parchment; the Venus-Flytrap chuckled deeply, relinquished the scroll when Professor Sprout tickled it, and Professor Sprout examined it, as if she had done nothing more interesting than retrieve the scroll from under a pile of books.

"He's such a naughty scallywag," Professor Sprout said affectionately, glancing at the Venus-Flytrap with a very motherly look on her face. She waved the parchment. "Right. To-Do list. I'll show you around first, then we can get stuck in with watering and harvesting and planting." Maia nodded, and tugged her sun-cream, apron and dragon-hide gloves out of her bag; she rubbed sun-cream on every bare inch of skin, as did Neville when she offered the bottle, and when they snapped their dragon-hide gloves on, they followed Professor Sprout around the greenhouse.

It was as much a refresher course for Neville as a practical lesson for Maia as Professor Sprout went around the greenhouse; she asked Neville to correctly identify specific plants for Maia, their properties and uses, treatment methods and life-cycle.

Professor Sprout tickled plants that revealed bristly spines particularly favoured for ingredients in love potions and joke-sweets; cut up a fungus for them to try, which tasted like golden-syrup; sent them crawling across the floor picking up a tray of leaping toadstools that the honking daffodils had upset in a fit of the William-Tell Overture; gave them tiny sips from a giant purple pitcher-orchid, a sort of syrup-like liquid that tasted and smelled differently to everyone according to the tastes and scents they loved, apparently a very potent ingredient to the potion Amortentia, the most powerful love-potion in the world; they listened to the singing orchids, and the plant with the flowers like flamenco-dancers seemed particularly flirtatious whenever Neville approached; Maia learned that the plant with the enormous elephant-ear-sized purple leaves was actually dragonsbane, and Professor Sprout remarked that if they looked out over the Herbology greenhouses at midnight, they would see the bioluminescent glow of several colourful, otherworldly plants that looked exactly like particularly beautiful jellyfish or sea-anemones and urchins, which were favoured in other countries, where they weren't so rare, as children's nightlights.

Several plants and flowers, Maia recognised from her aunt's Israeli Herbologist friend's gardens, there grown in abundance but here, in the Highlands greenhouses, were rare. Professor Sprout was very well-travelled, and very well-connected with Herbologists all over the Wizarding world; the Hogwarts greenhouses were some of the finest amongst all the Wizarding schools of the world. School greenhouses had to be, by their nature, the very best they could be, but as Neville said, "I've never seen the greenhouses in high-summer before. They're absolutely amazing!"

When Professor Sprout had shown her the last of the incredibly curious plants and flowers, she set Maia and Neville to work. Armed with their dragon-hide gloves and trowels, and a big bag of dragon-dung fertiliser, utilising the _Aguamenti_ charm to water the plants, they were set the tasks of potting bulbs and sowing trays of seeds, some of which had started to germinate and grow even as Maia planted them; Neville had to teach her how to correctly prune several plants, and how to harvest the honey from a strange plant that had five large, flat petals, each of which curiously resembled honeycombs; Professor Sprout gave them a lecture on the proper time and way to gather dragonsbane leaves, how to prepare them for use as potion ingredients, and they had to massage a potion into a particular mushroom that Professor Sprout said was suffering from depression. The mushroom, which stood as large as a dinner-table, should have been a vibrant turquoise colour with many spots; it was now an off, greyish shellfish-pink.

"Missing the attention from the students," Professor Sprout sighed, patting the mushroom affectionately. "Happens every year, I keep telling him they'll come back!"

"Right," Maia said softly, staring at the mushroom. She shook herself, took the bottle of potion from Neville, who had already tipped half the contents into his hands, and they got to work. "I suppose there's a first for everything," Maia laughed, and Neville grinned, chuckling.

It was hot, sweaty work, and Maia's back and her knees were killing her by the time they paused, Professor Sprout producing a magically-powered hotplate onto which she tossed handfuls of chopped mushrooms, and they had the most wonderful lunch, sitting on upturned terracotta pots, eating small plates of piping-hot mushrooms cooked with a bit of fresh garlic, sipping little glasses of some strange, bubbly, utterly delicious liquid that came from bell-shaped glass flowers when you milked the golden stigma.

They had to collect sap from several plants and bottle it, take cuttings from specific plants and re-pot them, bind picked leaves together for drying, and they had to tickle a huge, leafy plant so that it trembled and shivered with silent laughter and let its grapefruit-sized seeds shake free; Maia and Neville had to catch them in oven-gloves charmed to repel fire, then use a Freezing Charm so they didn't incinerate everything they touched.

At four o'clock, laden with many cuttings, envelopes of seeds, bunches of herbs and flowers to dry out, and severe sunburn on her cheekbones and nose, Maia dawdled beside Neville, yawning, as they made their way through the Hogwarts grounds, back to Hogsmeade. Maia was so exhausted, she just wanted to curl up in one of Madam Rosmerta's leather booths and sleep…or maybe she could have slept in that huge mattress-sized celosia-hydrangea-type fuchsia moss thing.

"I am _so_…tired," Maia mumbled, traipsing into the Three Broomsticks with her eyes at half-mast. The afternoon sun was so hot and drowsy, her face and décolleté were burned despite the sun-cream she had put on, her back was killing her, her knees were bruised…she'd never had it this bad after spending a day in her veggie-patch.

"Getting old…" Neville grunted in response.

"There you two are!" Madam Rosmerta smiled. "Floo Powder's in the pot on the mantelpiece in the private parlour." They had to use the private parlour, in case anybody heard them say 'number twelve, Grimmauld Place', despite the fact that only Professor Dumbledore could confess that it was the location of the Headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. Maia really didn't like the Floo Network, especially when extremely tired, though it did make her more relaxed as she spun around and around, never stopping.

She fell out of the fire, onto the kitchen hearth. For a moment, she didn't move, too tempted to curl up and sleep. Then a deep voice said, "You look _gorgeous_!" Maia peeked up blearily, managing to haul herself off the floor into a chair at the kitchen-table, and glared sleepily at Jack.

"Shouldn't you be upstairs?" she mumbled.

"Had to pick up provisions," Jack grinned, lifting a bottle of Butterbeer and a _PlayWizard_ magazine. "Neville just headed up for a bath."

"I think I might join him," Maia murmured, and Jack choked on his Butterbeer. Maia managed to roll her eyes. "I meant I'll go and have a bath too…" She shook her head, and eyed Jack's Butterbeer. Seeing her eyes on it, he chuckled, smirked, and promptly drained it. "You are evil. And you must be destroyed." Jack laughed deeply.

"Well, go and get cleaned up before you destroy me," he grinned. "Sirius expects the Weasleys in a few hours." Maia moaned; _people_. She was too tired. And her skin was really too hot. She was covered in sweat and soot. _Sexy_.

She hauled herself upstairs, filled her bathtub (the bath filled at an alarmingly quick rate, complete with bubbles and perfumes that had their own little taps) and yawned widely as she sank into the hot water.

Twenty minutes later, someone knocked on the door, and Maia started; she had dozed off, head resting on a balled-up towel. The bubbles were still there, the perfumed water was still hot…she loved magic. But she screeched, "_YOU WOKE ME UP!_"

"Sorry!" Neville called through the door. "Sirius sent me to check you've not drowned."

"Well I haven't," Maia called back grumpily. She rinsed the conditioner out of her hair, winced at how red her bare chest was when she glanced down, and climbed out of the bath, towelling herself off before slinging on the very soft, sleeveless sundress she had sewn out of the sky-blue fabric printed with splodges of sunflowers and other little flowers. It was light and so _comfy_, she loved it.

She used the charm Ailith had taught her to dry her hair, and smiled softly at her reflection, feeling refreshed, not too badly sunburned after all, as she examined her appearance; her long, long hair curled naturally to the dimples at her lower-back; she pinned her hair out of her face, and in her room brought out her box of nail-polishes (she owned three) and after applying a coat of her favourite red lipstick, she made her way downstairs with her camera and her processing equipment, her diary and a few of her books. She sprawled in an armchair in the den, the leather cool against her skin, Neville and Cedric were playing chess: Cedric was playing, Neville was losing. Maia yawned, shrugging slightly.

"What're you up to?" she asked, glancing at Cedric, who had his stationery out despite playing chess with Neville.

"Writing to Cho," he said softly, glancing at the chessboard as Neville moved a pawn.

"_Again_?" Maia said, as she brought out her nail-polish bottles. "Didn't you_ just_ send her a letter?" Cedric shrugged, blushing slightly. Maia shot Neville a wink as she shook a bottle of _Essie_ 'Imported Bubbly' polish, grabbing her bottle of clear base-coat and _Essie_ 'Blanc', and glanced back at Cedric. "If it's _naughty_, I am intercepting that!" Cedric blushed.

"It's not naughty," he flushed, hiding a grin.

"I got Cedric to say 'naughty'. Oh, I bet it is! Look at him blush!" Maia grinned at Neville, laughing.

"It _isn't_," Cedric said adamantly, and Maia laughed.

"I'm just teasing!" she chuckled, raising her palms up defensively. She glanced at her bare toes, canting her head to one side, and plucked the bottle of _Essie_ 'Jam N' Jelly' from the little lacquer box where she kept her polishes. "So, what's this Cho like, anyway?"

"She's nice," Cedric said, giving a subtle shrug. Maia gave him a look. She could hardly do anything with that! "She plays Quidditch for Ravenclaw," Cedric said, dipping his quill into the pot of Colour-Change Ink Maia had made her first Potions session with Sirius.

"She's in Ravenclaw?" Maia said, glancing at Cedric. "So she's smart, too?" Cedric nodded.

"And she's very kind," he said softly, glancing at his letter.

"Are you going to meet up over the summer?" Maia asked, and Cedric's shoulders slumped.

"I don't know how I can," he said sadly. "Not unless Mum or Dad go with me." He shot her an uncharacteristically sardonic look. Maia gazed back.

"Oh, Cedric," she said softly, shaking her head slowly, grinning. "Cedric, Cedric, _Cedric_! You are such a _good_ _boy_." He raised an eyebrow. "You're of-age in the Wizarding world. You're living in the heart of London, while your parents are in _Devon_; you're under the temporary guardianship of a fugitive wanted for mass-homicide who is, starting tonight, going to be absolutely enthralled by a pirate wireless-station… The possibilities are _endless_." Cedric glanced at her.

"I think Mrs Weasley is right," he said softly, frowning slightly. "You and the twins combined would bring on an Apocalypse."

"Should I take that as a compliment?" she smirked.

"Absolutely!" crowed a voice, and Maia jumped. Neville whipped around, sending a handful of pawns flying, and Cedric looked like he'd stabbed through his letter with his quill. Maia glanced around.

Standing in the doorway were four flaming redheads.

Three were male; two were tall, incredibly broad-shouldered, with very strong arms; one was incredibly tall and very lanky, looking a bit like Harry due to the fact that he seemed to have been stretched and starved; the girl had a sheet of long red hair, and warm brown eyes. The twins—identical to the last freckle—were grinning at Maia; they were _very_ good-looking.

But then, she was obsessed with the Eleventh Doctor. He wore braces and a bowtie…

Perhaps it was the fact that their identical grins illuminated their faces with utter, undiluted enthusiasm. They were infectious.

"Is it six o'clock already?" Maia asked, checking her watch. "Oh, it is… How long was I _in_ the bath?"

"Nearly an hour," Neville said, glancing at her.

"Oh. I thought I was only in there twenty minutes. Time flies when you're sleeping—hello!" Maia smiled, twisting in her seat to grin at the four Weasleys.

"Maia the Magnificent," one of the twins said, grinning handsomely, and his twin grinned too, winking, and they both strutted into the den, throwing themselves down on the empty sofa. The one who had spoken reached across, offering his hand. "I'm George. This is Fred."

"It's nice to finally meet you," Maia smiled, glancing at Fred, who was eyeing the board-games on the coffee-table. "Bill's been telling me a lot of stories about you."

"The trick is figuring out which ones are true," George grinned.

"Bill says they probably all are," Maia smirked, and the twins laughed. Fred glanced over at the door.

"Well, come in!" he rolled his eyes.

"Maia, this is our brother Ron, and Ginny," George said, and the two other Weasleys entered the room, gazing around.

"You all know Neville and Cedric?" Maia said, gesturing to the two boys, who both nodded and grinned. She counted again; four. Then she frowned. "Sorry, I thought… Your mum asked if I could set aside a room specifically for your brother Percy, so he could work uninterrupted… Where's he?"

At this, all four Weasley kids exchanged darkly significant looks; George loped off the sofa to close the door to the den; he did a double-take at Jessica Alba wielding a lasso on the back of the door, but turned his back, sighing.

"Whatever you do," Ginny said, looking tired, "don't mention Percy in front of our mum and dad."

"Why not?" Neville asked. Maia frowned.

"What's happened?" she asked; the last she'd heard it, Mr and Mrs Weasley had been thinking of asking Percy to join the Order; he worked in the Department of International Magical Cooperation.

"Percy and our dad had a row," Fred said heavily. "I've never seen Dad row with anyone like that. It's normally Mum who shouts…" Maia nodded slightly; she could see that. In that marriage, she suspected Mrs Weasley wore the trousers.

"It was last night," Ron said moodily. "We were all getting packed to come here… Percy came home from the Ministry and told us he'd been promoted." Maia frowned.

"Isn't that a _good_ thing?" she asked.

"Well, yes and no," George said. "See, Percy got into a load of trouble over Crouch, there's an inquiry and everything. They said Percy should've realised Crouch was…different, and informed a superior. But you know Percy," he shook his head, glancing at Cedric and Neville, both of whom Maia supposed must have met the third-eldest Weasley brother at Hogwarts. "Crouch left him in charge; he wasn't going to complain…"

"So why promote him?" Neville asked, frowning.

"That's what we wondered," George said heavily. "He came home really pleased with himself—more than usual—and told Dad he'd been offered a position in Fudge's own office. A really good one for someone only a year out of Hogwarts—Junior Assistant to the Minister. He expected Dad to be all impressed, I think."

"Only, Dad wasn't," Fred said grimly.

"Why not?" Cedric asked, frowning slightly.

"Well, apparently Fudge is getting antsy. Anyone who's in contact with Dumbledore is blacklisted."

"_Why_?" Maia gaped.

"Well…" Fred and George exchanged a look. "From what we've overheard from Mum and Dad, we think that Fudge is getting paranoid that Dumbledore's after his job." Maia laughed.

"That's ridiculous," she scoffed dismissively. "Why would he think that?"

"All this stuff with You-Know-Who almost coming back," Fred said, tipping Cedric a nod. "I dunno; Dad reckons Fudge is worried Dumbledore will use it to gain office. I mean, under Dumbledore's watch, Harry's thwarted You-Know-Who three times in the last four years."

"I can see how people would love to have their hero's protector as Minister for Magic," Maia said, nodding. "Especially since the current one's a blithering idiot." The twins smirked. "But Sirius said Professor Dumbledore's been offered the Ministerial post numerous times before, and always rejected it."

"Yeah, Dad says he'll never leave Hogwarts," George grinned fondly. "Anyway, everyone already knows Fudge pelts Dumbledore with owls every day, asking for advice."

"That's pissing Fudge off, too," Fred said. "He's trying to sever all contact with Dumbledore, do everything on his own."

"So that's how Umbridge got close enough to start pouring poison in his ear," Maia said softly, frowning down at her toes thoughtfully as she painted them vibrant fuchsia, touched with a hint of iridescence.

"How does this all fit in with Percy?" Cedric asked the twins.

"Fudge knows Dad's friendly with Dumbledore," Fred said, sighing. "He's always thought Dad's a bit of a weirdo because of his Muggle obsession—" Maia grinned.

"Your dad's got the right idea about Muggles," she said, glancing up as she painted her little-toe. "Study their entertainments and transportation, not the Muggles themselves."

"Yeah, well, regardless, Dad reckons Fudge only wants Percy in his office because he wants to use Percy to spy on the family—and Dumbledore," George said. Neville looked alarmed; Cedric let out a soft whistle, shaking his head.

"How did your brother take that?" Maia asked, glancing from the twins to gangling Ron to pretty Ginny.

"Has anyone told you what Percy's like?" George asked, and Maia gave an awkward shrug. She _had_ heard. When Mrs Weasley had mentioned her third son would need his own room so he could work, Neville had filled her in on what Percy Weasley had been like in his Hogwarts days. "Percy went completely berserk. He said—well, he said loads of terrible stuff. He said he's had to struggle against Dad's lousy reputation ever since he joined the Ministry, and that Dad's got no ambition and that's why we've never had much money—"

"_What_?" Maia gaped, incensed. Ginny made a noise like an angry cat. "But your dad's got a wonderful reputation; _everyone_ loves Mr Weasley in the Order. And he's very serious about his job, even if everyone else thinks it's a joke." George gave her a grim smile.

"You've not met Percy. He'd throw us in Azkaban if he thought it'd help his career," he said darkly, and Maia shivered at the mention of the Wizard prison. "He wants to be Minister for Magic one day."

"Well, I won't vote for him," Maia said curtly. "I'll be the one sending owl-bombs. He _said that_ to your dad?"

Mr Weasley was _lovely_.

"That's not the worst part," Ron said in a low voice. "He said Dad was an idiot to run around with Dumbledore, that Dumbledore was heading for big trouble, and Dad was going to go down with him and that he—Percy—knew where his loyalty lay and it was with the Ministry. And if Mum and Dad were going to become traitors to the Ministry he was going to make sure everyone knew he didn't belong to our family anymore. He packed his bags last night and left." Cedric looked appalled; Neville was gaping.

Maia sat back. She had been hearing so much about Ministry employees trying to reverse legislation and reform, she hadn't even thought about the Minister for Magic. Beyond his racist Senior Undersecretary, she hadn't thought about the Ministerial Cabinet at all. But the Minister had to have an opinion on everything; there was a reason why Umbridge had been allowed to push all those backward laws through the Wizengamot. And if Fudge was paranoid that Professor Dumbledore wanted his job, and was using his successes, being Harry Potter's protector, for leverage amongst the Wizarding public to gain office…how could Fudge compete?

_How could Fudge compete?_ Maia thought again. He couldn't; everyone loved Professor Dumbledore. And it was due to the present Ministry, not an inherited one, that centaurs were losing their land, that werewolves had to live underground, foraging and fighting for survival, that goblins had been cheated out of their winnings from a bet with a Head of Department at the Ministry.

Sirius had told her that Barty Crouch Sr. had been tipped for the next Minister for Magic when Millicent Bagnold had stepped down; but after the scandal with his son, public opinion had gone against him, and Fudge, despite requests for Professor Dumbledore to fill the post, had become Minister for Magic. So Fudge never should have been Minister, and there were probably a lot of people who didn't want him as Minister; and he probably knew that. Meanwhile, Professor Dumbledore had consistently aided the boy who had once again thwarted Voldemort's attempts to return. Fudge had imprisoned an innocent man rather than investigate into the attacks at Hogwarts when the Chamber of Secrets had been opened; he had condoned the use of the Dementor's Kiss should Sirius be found; he had stationed Dementors at a _school_; he had also allowed two Dementors to suck out the soul of a man whose testimony could have made drastic changes to the Ministry, helping them purge it so Voldemort could never gain a foothold…

"I'd wondered why your parents weren't at the meeting last night," Maia said thoughtfully.

"You're allowed to sit in on meetings?!" George said eagerly, sitting up. Maia cracked a grin.

"No, I'm not," she chuckled softly.

"Oh, I know that kind of smile," George said softly, grinning at her. Maia glanced back at him.

"What kind of smile?" she asked, trying to hide hers.

"The kind of smile that says you know more than you're letting on," Fred grinned.

"Oh. Well, yes," Maia said, chuckling.

"So, tell us, what's been happening?" Ron said eagerly, and Cedric set his quill down, turning to look at her.

"Okay, well… Most of the stuff, it's not _secret_. I mean, it's supposed to stay secret that the Order's orchestrating it, _especially_ if Fudge is paranoid Dumbledore's making a power-play for the Ministerial post," Maia sighed, frowning, shaking her head. "A lot of the members are involved in repealing legislation—like Mr Diggory; Remus is working with him to get a werewolf liaison in Mr Diggory's department, and to scrap all those new laws Umbridge just had passed through the Wizengamot. Ailith's working to get stuff in the _Prophet_ that they _should_ be reporting on, things the public needs to know even if the subjects are delicate. Like Fudge allowing two Dementors to Kiss Barty Crouch Jr.; it would've been _huge_ if he'd been tried again by the Wizengamot, after his father snuck him out of the prison, what he did to Mad-Eye, and Harry… And then we've got quite a few Aurors, two very senior members of the Wizengamot, Madam Bones at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, some people in the International Magical Office of Law, one in the Department of Magical Games and Sports… And then, of course, your dad. And Bill, at Gringott's; Remus is working on his werewolf contacts to marshal support; then lots of other people, kind of a network to keep track of things going on."

"But what are they actually _doing_?" Fred asked.

"I just told you. It's mostly political stuff," Maia said, shrugging. "Trying to eradicate all the corruption in the Ministry, before Voldemort can get a chance to use it to his advantage." She ignored the wince all six of the others had shared. "But I do know some things, things I don't think Sirius meant to let slip."

"Like what?" George grinned eagerly.

"Well, he mentioned one day that the Order are keeping tabs on all those Death Eaters who walked free after the War ended," Maia said. "He mentioned some of their names… Malfoy, Nott, Crabbe… And he said your dad was planning raids, hoping to catch them off-guard and find something incriminating. And I know that the Order takes turns going _on duty_. Twelve hours each. I don't know where, but every time someone has a shift, they come back here and leave a report."

"Watching out for Harry, maybe?" Ron said drily.

"I don't think so," Maia said, shaking her head. "They've been sharing guard-duty since I've been living here, which is nearly a month; they only just sorted out a rota to keep an eye on Little Whinging last week… Madam Bones is going to try and get control of Azkaban out of the hands of the Dementors, and Kingsley, Mad-Eye and Tonks are all going to try and conduct covert investigations in their own office—the Auror Headquarters—to root out traitors. You know, those who covered up stuff people like Malfoy did during the War. So's Mr Diggory; his department's full of racist scumbags who should be euthanized."

"And you're helping my dad," Cedric said, glancing at her. "You've been talking to him about house-elves." Ron groaned, shaking his head as he clapped his hands to his face.

"Yeah, Hermione told us all your ideas," George said, nodding at her. "Like _them_ better than forcing house-elves to take clothes."

"Baby-steps," Maia shrugged delicately. "All good things come to those who wait…and work hard." She frowned thoughtfully. "Where's your mum, anyway?"

"She's downstairs. Professor Lupin's with her," George said, looking a little glum.

"He'll cheer her up," Ginny said sadly. "He always cheered me up."

"Yeah. Good bloke, Lupin," George smiled. Neville nodded fervently in agreement.

"So, that's all the Order's up to?" Fred said, glancing at Maia rather glumly. "Making friends and influencing people?"

"Basically. And that's a lot more powerful than mobilising any army," Maia said, correctly interpreting Fred's expression as disappointment that nothing more exciting was being done. "Without Voldemort having actually risen, the only people to fight against are the corrupt ones in the Ministry. Get rid of them, Voldemort won't get a foothold if he ever does return. It's all about safeguarding the future, really. Thinking three steps ahead to cut off any of Voldemort's possible moves."

"Like what?"

"Well, removing the Dementors from Azkaban before Voldemort can order them to release all his supporters; because Sirius says the Dementors _will_ join him, they did during the War," Maia said. "And getting the werewolves on board with Remus backing a liaison in the Ministry, to reverse all of the outdated laws against them; sending envoys to the giants. Liaising with the goblins about _their_ rights… Locking up anyone who bought their way out of Azkaban after the War… Eradicating archaic pro-pureblood laws, safeguarding Muggle-borns. It's actually a lot more revolutionary than it sounds."

"Oh yeah?" Fred said incredulously.

"You're talking about eradicating laws that have been in place for centuries, annihilating prejudices that have been tearing divides in Wizarding society for just as long," Maia said, carefully painting her nails. "What other government has ever given the goblins _back_ the rights they took? Most Ministerial Cabinets were involved in _expelling_ the giants from their homes; even last month there was new legislation passed to restrict centaurs' lands. Madam Bones is beginning the attempt to make the judicial system far less corrupt, more modernised, democratic, so what happened to Sirius won't happen again. Holding the people responsible for the War culpable, despite the contents of their Gringott's vaults and what they do with it."

"I suppose when you put it like that," Ron said thoughtfully. Maia sat thinking for a moment.

"Maybe we should propose the idea of a different approach to Muggles," she said thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?" Neville asked.

"Well, like I said earlier about Mr Weasley, he's got the right idea," Maia said. "He's studying the things that Muggles _make_; that's the first step to studying their history, which means a greater appreciation for the state of the Muggle world now. If Wizards studied Muggle history, and culture… There wouldn't be all this confusion between the two worlds; Wizards would know how to dress and fit in with Muggles, they'd know how to tender Muggle money; they'd be able to have a conversation with a Muggle without seeming odd. There comes a point when just shielding one world from the other isn't enough. Soon enough there won't be enough space to hide… Well, Sirius is going to start that off, anyway…"

"What d'you mean?" Ron asked curiously; Maia pointed to the studio. "What on earth's that?"

"Wireless broadcasting studio," Maia smiled. "Cedric and Neville helped me put it together for Sirius: he's going to have his own wireless station, to play Wizard _and_ Muggle rock, and talk about things the Order needs to spread awareness about."

"Bill told me about that. He said it's a really good idea," Ginny said, in a tone that suggested that settled the matter.

"And when Sirius is acknowledged as innocent, I think he should open up the Wizard cinema he always wanted to," Maia said, glancing at her drying fingernails, filed short and buffed smooth, with very dainty French tips, and a subtle iridescent shimmer. "Wizards look down on Muggles so much, they don't realise what amazing things Muggles actually have to contribute; like films. Literature. Communication. _Games_. The boys had never played _Monopoly_ until Ailith and I taught them."

"What's _Monopoly_?" George asked curiously; Maia indicated the board-game set out on the coffee-table.

"We're halfway through a game. You have to basically buy up all the properties, and the one who has the most money and properties at the end of the game wins," Maia said, shrugging. "And _Clue_, you have to discover who killed someone in a big house-party. But _Monopoly_ can go on for weeks."

"Don't you play chess?" Ron asked, looking crestfallen.

"I _can_. I don't," Maia chuckled. "My aunt stopped playing with me when I was nine."

"Why's that?"

"I always won."

"Really?" Ron smirked. Maia nodded. "Your aunt mustn't have been very good."

"Oh, she was; she was a champion when she was young," Maia smiled. "But then she taught me everything she knew…"

"Want to play later?" Ron asked.

"Play someone with a reputation as having played the best game of chess Hogwarts has seen in years?" Maia asked, and Ron grinned.

"What else do you do around here for fun?" Fred asked, glancing around. "Are all these records yours?"

"No, they belong to Sirius," Maia said, smiling. "Mine are upstairs. _Fun_? We walk to Diagon Alley every day; the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ are playing Battle of the Bands tomorrow night at the Brass Jobberknoll, so we're going to that… And I thought we could all go to my house; Professor Dumbledore's protected it, and Sirius says you can fly all over and practice Quidditch if you want."

"And in the evenings Maia puts on some of her Muggle films," Neville added, smiling. "Or _Doctor Who_, if Opal's here."

"Although, Neville and Maia have lessons with Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout," Cedric said, glancing at her. "And Professor Lupin, if he's not working."

"And, Maia's been recruited by Professor Dumbledore and Sirius to go and check on Harry every few days," Neville spoke up. "To make sure he's not being starved."

"Yeah. Or being _sat on_ by his elephantine cousin," Maia said drily. The twins laughed. "What?"

"Is he still dieting?" Fred grinned.

"I think so… Why?" Maia asked, trying not to smile too widely at the infectious grin spreading across George's face.

"Last summer, we fed him a Ton-Tongue Toffee," Fred smirked.

"Made his tongue grow four feet long before his parents let Dad shrink it," George grinned, and Maia laughed.

"Served him right," Fred said, a little savagely. "Harry said those Dursleys have been bullying him from the moment he was dumped on their doorstep."

"Yeah. Your mum was afraid he was going to be starved; I gave him a ration-pack," Maia said, nodding.

"And by ration-pack, Maia means she gave him weeks' worth of her best home-cooking," Neville said, grinning. "With those amazing éclairs."

"We've heard good things about your culinary skills," George said, eyeing her thoughtfully. "Are you her?"

"Her who?"

"The one Mum thinks Bill's fallen flat on his face for," George said, eyeing her shrewdly. Maia laughed.

"Unfortunately not," she chuckled.

"Mum's convinced Bill's met someone," Ginny said, sighing.

"Me too," Maia said. The twins raised their eyebrows at her.

"Why's that?" Ron asked.

"Well, Bill's sort of started taking cooking lessons from me," Maia said, shrugging. "And he asked if I had any books to help him learn French. You only ever do that if you're trying to impress someone."

"So Mum's _not_ just being paranoid her ickle baby firstborn Bill is going to get _married_," Fred said, eyes widening.

"Wonder who the girl is," George said thoughtfully. "Mind you, you do actually seem a bit young for Bill, Maia."

"Er…thanks, I think?" Maia chuckled. "Not that I didn't ask Bill to pay for my instruction with his body… He declined." The twins and Ginny laughed; Neville grinned and flushed softly.

"Why doesn't Bill just ask Mum for cooking-lessons?" Ron frowned. "She'd love that."

"I think Bill might cotton on that she's trying to get information out of him about this mysterious girl when Mum comes at him with a whisk and a cleaver," George said, and Maia laughed.

"She'd do it, too," she chuckled.

"What damage could Mum do with a _whisk_?" Ron stared, his expression laughable.

"I don't want to find out," George shivered. He glanced at Maia, taking in her features almost greedily. "So, you taught Dad how to ride a Muggle bicycle."

"Yes," Maia grinned. "Has Bill shown you the pictures yet?"

"There are _pictures_!" Fred grinned eagerly. Maia nodded.

"Yeah, Dad's really taken with you," George said, eyeing Maia thoughtfully.

"The boys reckon Dad _fancies_ you," Ginny laughed, and Maia laughed, shaking her head.

"Your dad's really cool," Maia said honestly, smiling. "I really like you're your mum keeps saying I'm too thin. I think she'd force-feed me fourth helpings, if I wasn't already doing the same to Sirius and Remus."

"Yeah, Professor Lupin looked different," George nodded. "New robes?"

"From Sirius," Maia nodded. "We actually had to force him into them at wand-point; he wouldn't accept them."

"Why not?" Fred asked, quirking an eyebrow. Maia shrugged delicately, not wanting to say that Remus didn't like accepting…well, he wasn't used to being taken care of.

"Well, I tell you what, no one would recognise Sirius Black anymore as the wizard on the Wanted posters," George said, grinning at Maia.

"Rejuvenation Drafts, twelve meals a day and a lot of sunshine will work wonders," Maia grinned. "He even cut his hair the second morning I was here. Plus, I think trips to Gambol & Jape's and the sweetshop in Diagon Alley helped."

"_You've_ been to Gambol & Jape's?" Fred quirked an eyebrow.

"Of course," Maia smiled. She glanced at George as the twins exchanged a look, eyebrows raised. "What?"

"We thought you were…well…" George said, frowning at her as if she had posed a question that couldn't be answered easily.

"A goody two-shoes like Hermione," Fred said, and George nodded. Maia laughed.

"Is Hermione a goody two-shoes?" Maia asked.

"Oh yeah," Ron nodded, without hesitation. Maia chuckled.

"Well, I wouldn't say I'm a goody two-shoes," she said, shrugging slightly. "I like to have fun." An understatement. "I _love_ to have fun."

"See, we got the impression from what she told us about you that you were…well, just like her," Ginny said, gazing thoughtfully at Maia. "Especially since you took your exams early."

"Oh. That," Maia sighed, shrugging slightly. "Doesn't matter, really; I've had to start all over again."

"Oh, god, that must be depressing!" George stared at her. "To think of going through another seven _years_ of school." He grimaced. Ginny caught Maia's eye.

"The twins are of the opinion that education is about _learning_, not about homework," she said, rolling her eyes and grinning. "Apparently, they say there's a very big difference between the two." Maia thought about that for a moment.

"Very true," she said, nodding at the twins. "My GCSE Latin exam, I'm sure I got top marks, but the only thing I remember is _Ascendo Tun_."

"Do you know what you just said to us?" George grinned.

"Up yours," Maia grinned back, and George laughed. "Remus says I'll find use for my Latin at Hogwarts. Most of the spells have Latin roots. Last night Tonks and I played Latin dirty _Scrabble_."

"Who's Tonks?" Ginny asked.

"Sirius's cousin Andromeda's daughter," Maia smiled. "She's an Auror, just qualified. She's the only person to have been accepted to the Auror Academy for about three years. Mad-Eye's taken her under his overcoat… That sounded vaguely dirty. And now I have that disturbing image in my head…"

"Tonks is really cool," Neville smiled.

"_And_ Mrs Weasley traded shifts with her so Tonks could go to Battle of the Bands tomorrow! The _final_!" Maia said, grinning, as she raised her fists into the air triumphantly.

"Mum's on duty tomorrow night?" Fred said quickly, and he and George exchanged a meaningful grin.

"And your dad's working late, apparently. Raids," Maia said, nodding, and the twins grinned even more broadly.

"But don't get any ideas," said a deep voice, and Maia glanced over the back of the sofa, grinning.

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: I absolutely love the idea of the Hogwarts greenhouses. Mixing magic and nature seems such a wonderful idea; the grown-glass flowers that chime are inspired by the book _Stardust_, spun-charms grown in an icy, treacherous mountain pass. For some reason, when I think of Neville, I'm now getting the image of Sam Gamgee in my head—perhaps because I'm watching _Fellowship of the Ring_… The phosphorescent plants that glow in the dark are inspired by _Avatar_, of course.

I love cheerful Sirius! Any ideas for _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ products you'd love them to have invented and mentioned in the books? Because I'd love to put them in here! I've come up with loads for Maia's inventions. And they have a purpose later on in the story, too.


	17. Chapter 17

**A.N.**: Okay, I've had no suggestions about love-potions, _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ products or about Bill's _proper_ girlfriend, but despite that, I have decided to treat you all to an update. A little Weasleys-on-Marauder action. That's got your attention!

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_17_

* * *

><p>Sirius stood in the now-open doorway, grinning lazily. "Found your way up here alright, then?"<p>

"We followed the smell of nail-polish," Ginny said, glancing at Maia's lacquered box of little colourful bottles, with a slight crinkle to her nose.

"Everyone's going to start arriving soon. If you want something to eat or drink, you'd better grab it quick," Sirius said, and Maia nodded, climbing off the sofa.

"I'll bring up some stuff," she said. "Cedric, Neville, show them around the den."

"Keep your hands _off_ my dog-bowl," Sirius said warningly, eyeing the four Weasleys. He grinned, and loped off down the corridor, back downstairs. Maia returned to the den, ten minutes later, with a collection of baskets and pitchers levitating in front of her. Cedric got glasses out from the sideboard, and the _stuff_ accumulated on the coffee-table was displaced unceremoniously onto the floor, where Crookshanks started investigating it all, so Maia could set down the baskets of sandwiches, sweet treats, pitchers of Butterbeer and cordial.

"This is a _snack_?" Ron said, eyes widening, as the twins grinned and started helping themselves.

"I can only start dinner when the meetings have broken up for the evening," Maia said. "Otherwise there are just too many people in the kitchen. And it's far too hot, anyway."

"So, tell us more about this wireless station," George said, offering her the basket of sandwiches. Maia took two, and smiled.

"Sirius told me he'd always wanted his own wireless show, so I thought, why wait until he's exonerated?" Maia said. "This house is under the Fidelius Charm, so no one from the Ministry will be able to track Sirius here, even if someone recognises his voice. He's going to play all the rock-n-roll that the _WWN_ won't play, and he's going to talk about important things, like werewolf rights, eradicating pro-pureblood laws, that sort of thing."

"Why isn't the _Prophet_ printing that stuff?" Ginny asked.

"Ailith says the editor is right in Fudge's pocket," Maia said, sighing. "Seems to think the _Prophet_'s purpose is to tell the Wizarding public exactly what Fudge wants them to hear. Not the truth. She's working him over, though. And I think Ailith's a force to be reckoned with when she sets her mind to something."

"Maia wants to start her own newspaper," Neville piped up, looking crestfallen as Crookshanks jumped on the chessboard he and Cedric were playing at, the pieces squealing and shouting as they ran from him.

"Your own newspaper?" George raised his eyebrows.

"Well, not so much a newspaper," Maia shrugged delicately. "Just something that can help witches and wizards assimilate with Muggles. Articles on how to properly tender Muggle money, how to dress like Muggles. I want to do reviews on books and films, and just… I don't know…"

"We thought it'd be a cool idea for all of us to contribute something," Cedric said, smiling.

"A nonsense newspaper," Maia chuckled softly, thinking of some of her favourite literary inspirations; Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll. "Made-up stories, or jokes, or just…anything you want."

"Quidditch results?" Ginny asked. Maia shrugged.

"If you like," she smiled. "And I thought about doing an article on Muggle history every week. Something significant that happened in the Muggle world that wizards should know about."

"Hey, could we put in the results for a chess tournament?" Ron grinned at her. "See who wins?"

"The Inter-Headquarters Chess Tournament," Maia chuckled. "Why not?"

"And advertising?" Fred asked.

"Advertising?" Maia chuckled. "When it's just us who's going to be reading it?"

"Hey, think big!" George grinned.

"You could go national," Fred said.

"Anyway, it'd be good practice for designing our advertising campaign."

"For your shop?" Maia asked, and the twins glanced at her.

"You know about the shop?"

"Bill told me, he said it was called _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_," Maia said. "He said you're inventors."

"Never been called _inventors_ before," Fred grinned, preening.

"Yeah. Usually it's Mum calling us hooligans," George grinned.

"How much stuff have you invented?" Maia asked curiously.

"Tonnes," George grinned.

"Yeah, but, keep it quiet," Fred said, glancing at the door to the den. "If Mum finds out we're still inventing, she'll do her nut."

"And she's already upset because of Percy," Ginny said softly, glancing at the door too.

"She'd make a huge mess," George said, shaking his head.

"And we're not prepared to have all our order-forms burned again," Fred scowled.

"Will you show me one?" Maia asked eagerly. She really was very curious about the Weasley twins' inventions. Bill said they'd probably put _Gambol & Jape's_ and _Zonko's_ out of business. Maia hadn't been to _Zonko's_ yet, but Sirius said it outstripped _Gambol & Jape's_. And if Bill said the twins' stuff was better than _Zonko's_…it _had_ to be spectacular.

"You can have a look at our workbooks, if you like," George said, and Maia didn't miss the sharp look Fred gave his twin. Ron exclaimed indignantly.

"You threatened to _curse me_ if I peeked at your workbooks!" he gaped.

"Well, you're not a fellow inventor," George said, staring at Maia. "I heard Mum telling Ginny you've been working on cosmetics. And a pocket-wireless."

"Had any progress with it?"

"Some, actually."

"We should have a chat later," George said, gazing at her, and Fred nodded.

"Why don't you have a chat _now_?" Ginny rolled her eyes.

"Privileged information, Gin; and you're not on the payroll," George said.

"Neither is Maia," Ginny pointed out.

George eyed Maia thoughtfully, canting his head to one side. A brilliant grin almost startled her, it appeared so quickly. "No, but she could be."

"We'll get together after dinner and talk," Fred said, staring at her thoughtfully.

"After dinner? We can't. We have to listen to Sirius' broadcast," Maia said, grinning. "He's afraid we'll be the only ones listening."

"_Radio Rock_, isn't it?" George asked, smiling. Maia nodded. "I wouldn't worry about no one listening; our friend Lee sent us a note about the station. Said he'd been to Mal's in Diagon Alley and got a postcard with his new records. Apparently Mal's been giving them out to every one of his customers."

"Good boy," Maia grinned.

"He said he was almost running out," George said, and Maia raised her eyebrows.

"I'll have to go to the printer and get more copies made," she said softly. "Hey—where's Kreacher?"

"In the library," Neville said.

"You have a library?" Ron asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah. Two storeys. Full of Dark stuff, Sirius says," Maia sighed. "Sirius and Kreacher have been working on stripping it. Then we're going to fill it with _our_ libraries."

"_Your_ libraries?" Fred quirked an eyebrow.

"Mine and Sirius' personal book collections," Maia nodded. "I've got more than enough to fill at least half the bookcases. So does Sirius, actually; but our collections mostly comprise of Muggle books."

"Dad showed us the book on the postal-system you let him borrow," George said, rolling his eyes and grinning.

"Apparently he's driving Mum up the wall staying up late reading it every night," Fred chuckled.

"Is it true you stole your dad's Ford Anglia for a mid-air joyride?" Maia asked.

"Yep," George said unconcernedly. "Fred drove. I navigated."

"Mum yelled," Ginny smirked.

"And _you_ ran out of the kitchen as soon as you saw Harry was sitting with us," Fred smirked back. Ginny rolled her eyes and looked away, though Maia saw her flush slightly. _Brothers_, Maia thought, grinning at Ginny, who shook her head and cast her brothers a look.

"So, about this newspaper," George said. "Tell us more about it."

"Well, I've only designed the heading," Maia said, and she pulled out her diary, in which she had painted a vibrant, moving illustration of a burning golden-scarlet phoenix. The name, _The Talon_, was superimposed in swirling, elegant lettering over it in black.

"I thought…Order of the _Phoenix_. Professor Dumbledore has a _pet_ phoenix," Maia shrugged. "And they looked so beautiful in the _Fantastic Beasts_ book, I had to paint one."

"The _Talon_," Fred said thoughtfully, nodding.

"You painted that?" George asked.

"Maia's multitalented," Neville chuckled, casting her an affectionate glance; Maia smiled back.

"I thought, maybe we could all write something, and put it all together when we meet," Maia said. "And, Sirius told me all about this map that he and Remus and James Potter made when they were at school, which you have to say the right password to access, so I thought, we could do that, instead of leaving the papers laying around for…the adults to read."

"Yeah!" Ginny grinned.

"Hang on…" George frowned, staring at Maia. "_Map_. Sirius and Professor Lupin wrote a _map_?"

"A map that requires a password?" Fred said, and the twins exchanged an enigmatic look.

"Yeah, when they were at school," Maia nodded. "They called it the Marauder's Map." Fred's jaw dropped; George clapped his hands to his cheeks, gaping at Maia.

"Sirius Black and _Professor _Lupin _wrote_ the _Marauder's_ _Map_?" George asked, sounding as if he was having small heart-palpitations. Ron clapped a hand to his forehead.

"I forgot!" he blurted, glancing at the twins. "I never told you. It was Sirius and Harry's dad and Professor Lupin who wrote the Marauder's Map. They signed it with their nicknames."

"Remus sometimes calls Sirius 'Padfoot', and Sirius usually calls Remus 'Moony'," Maia said.

"Harry's dad was 'Prongs'," Ron said, grinning; Maia laughed at the expressions on the twins' faces. "After his Animagus form; he was a stag. Sirius is a huge bear-like black dog—we thought he was a Grim the first time we saw him—and Professor Lupin is 'Moony' because he's a werewolf, obviously."

"And Wormtail?" Fred asked, looking faint.

"Peter Pettigrew," Maia said savagely, and the twins glanced at her. "He's the one who betrayed the Potters. He could transform into a rat—"

"Scabbers," Ron said heavily. "Did Sirius tell you all about that?" Maia nodded.

"If you tell him your leg still twinges sometimes, he'll feel guilty and relinquish his claim on the last éclair," Maia said, winking, and Ron chuckled.

"Not likely," said a deep voice, and the door swung open again. Sirius and Remus stood in the doorway. The twins exchanged a look, as Maia fiddled with her camera, and quite by accident she caught the twins flinging themselves to the floor in supplication, bowing as if to pharaohs, arms outstretched in front of them, crying, "_MASTERS_!"

Sirius raised his eyebrows; Remus looked faintly surprised. They both blinked at the twins, glanced at each other, then looked to Maia for an explanation. She chuckled from behind her camera.

"Sorry," Ron grinned, as Fred started to kiss the hem of Remus new robes. "We just told them you wrote the Marauder's Map."

"Ah," Sirius said slowly, realisation hitting, and a grin spread across his face. The twins continued to bow, Fred now hugging Remus' knees, a look of complete and utter bliss smoothing his features.

"If you were wearing a ring at this moment, Majesty, I would kiss it!" George wept theatrically, bowing one more time. He jumped to his feet in one movement, grinned, "I just might anyway," and leapt at Sirius, landing a kiss right full on the lips. Maia caught it on camera, and everyone in the room burst out laughing, even Remus, who was eyeing Fred at his knees rather warily.

"Careful," Sirius grinned, laughing handsomely, clapping an arm around George's shoulders as he broke away, "that's the most action I've had in fourteen years. You might just get lucky!"

"Well, that is something I never thought I'd see," Bill Weasley said, appearing in the doorway. He fixed George with a look, "Georgie, have you been sampling Amortentia again?"

"No!" George said indignantly, hands on his hips. From her place, kneeling on the sofa and leaning on the back for a steady hand, taking photographs, Maia got a very good angle on his bum. _Nice_, she thought, grinning to herself. The twins exchanged a rather evil grin.

"But that's a great idea, Bill! Thanks," Fred grinned, climbing to his feet.

"Do I want to know what's going on in here?" Bill asked, glancing around.

"Yeah, Neville, I thought you said ingesting that mushroom doesn't have any magical or hallucinogenic qualities," Sirius said, now fending off Fred, who was puckering his lips at him. "You didn't _lie_, did you? Boys, have you been eating strange blue toadstools?"

"No, we just want to show you our undying gratitude and appreciation," Fred said.

"Well—okay—you can start showing your appreciation by clearing out the library," Sirius said, dodging away from Fred and chuckling. Ginny had left her armchair to grin and link her arms around Bill's waist; he gave her the one-armed hug Maia was used to, smiling lazily at his twin-brothers fawning all over Remus.

"Are you lot coming downstairs?" Bill asked.

"In a minute—" Fred began.

"—we haven't finished worshipping _Moony_," George gushed, looking love-struck. Bill, catching Remus and Sirius' attention, grinned handsomely.

"I should probably show you the only way that'll wrangle the twins," he said, with a heavy sigh. He jumped at Fred and George, grabbing them both in a headlock.

"This only works—" George choked.

"—if Dopey the Dragon-Tamer is here—"

"—with his oversize biceps," George spluttered. Bill hauled his twin-brothers out of the room, one under each arm, and Maia chuckled as she followed with her diary and her camera, turning it upright so she could get a full-length photo of Fred and George bent double either side of Bill.

"_Help_!" Fred choked, kicking out his legs, while George writhed under Bill's other arm. Bill chuckled deeply.

"No way," Maia grinned, and Ginny giggled softly as she watched her twin-brothers struggle. "This view's way too good." Seemingly on cue, both Fred and George started shimmying their bottoms, and Maia laughed as she took another photograph. "That's front-page news in the _Talon_," she said, glancing at Ginny, who laughed.

"_Hang on!_" both twins chimed simultaneously, and they straightened up, Bill releasing them. They rounded on Remus.

"Last year—"

"The twelfth of November, specifically—"

"—the premier purveyor of aids to magical mischief-makers in Britain—"

"—gave us _detention_ for pulling a prank on Hufflepuff first-years—"

"What do you have to say for yourself?" Fred asked, arms crossed over his front, eyebrows raised.

"We _suffered_."

"Emotionally—"

"—you betrayed the memory of great Zonko himself!"

"Socially—"

"—Fred missed a library date with Angelina—"

"And physically—"

"—we had to polish the silver in the Trophy Room—"

"_Without magic_!" the twins chorused indignantly.

"Well?" George prompted, staring at Remus.

"I didn't give you detention for pulling a prank on the first-years," Remus frowned thoughtfully. "I gave you detention because you cursed Mr Montague in the hallway."

"Oh," the twins said together.

"Sorry," Fred grimaced, clapping a hand on Remus' shoulder.

"Hard to keep track," George said, pulling a face. "Ignore all that stuff we just said."

"We humbly beg your pardon, Master," Fred said, bowing his head.

"Yeah. We didn't mean to cheek Your Majesty," George said solemnly, looking contrite, an oddly sweet expression on his animated face.

"So, Harry got the Map from you two, did he?" Remus said, glancing from Fred to George, a little smile playing his lips. "I had it on good authority it was confiscated by Mr Filch _years_ ago."

"Please don't say 'years' like that, Moony," Sirius winced. "Makes me feel…ancient." Remus chuckled softly; the twins turned misty eyes on Sirius, having heard him use the moniker 'Moony'.

"Well," Fred said, as George raised a hand to his heart, giving Fred a soppy look, and Fred nodded, pretending to wipe away tears. "Since it is to you we owe _all_ our success…"

"When we were in our first year," George began, "young, carefree and innocent—" Bill, Ron and Ginny all snorted; Neville laughed, and Cedric's lips twitched. Hands on his hips, George rolled his eyes. "Well more innocent than we are _now_! We got into a spot of bother with Filch."

"We let off a Dungbomb in the corridor, and for some reason it upset him," Fred said, eyebrows raised.

"So he hauled us off to his office and started threatening us with the usual, detention—"

"—disembowelment—"

"—and we couldn't help noticing a drawer in one of his filing-cabinets marked _Confiscated and Highly Dangerous_," George said, and a grin illuminated his features; Maia could see where the story was headed, and so could Sirius; he was laughing deeply.

"Don't tell me—" Remus shook his head, trying to suppress a smile and failing.

"Well, what would you've done?" Fred said, grinning. "Darling George caused a diversion by dropping another Dungbomb, I whipped the drawer open, and grabbed the first thing I saw."

"And you learned how to work it," Sirius said, looking slightly impressed.

"The Map taught us more than all the teachers at Hogwarts," Fred said, smirking. He glanced at Remus. "Except you, of course, Professor."

"You don't have to call me that anymore, Fred," Remus smiled. "It's Remus."

"We owe you so much," George sighed, smiling warmly.

"Noble men, the both of you," Fred said solemnly, glancing from Remus to Sirius, who was now chuckling silently. "Working tirelessly to help new generations of lawbreakers."

"Not exactly the legacy I'd hoped to leave when I left Hogwarts last year," Remus chuckled softly.

"I'm glad you nicked the Map back from Filch," Sirius said, grinning. "Seven years' worth of work down the drain when he confiscated it off Wormtail."

"We're just lucky Wormtail didn't take it for himself," Remus said thoughtfully, frowning as they continued on their way downstairs. "Imagine if the Map had ended up in Voldemort's hands…"

"Doesn't bear thinking about," Sirius growled softly.

"Y'know, Hermione reckoned you were using the secret passages to get into the castle," Ron said thoughtfully. "Said she was worried about what might happen if you found the Map, Sirius." Sirius chuckled softly.

"Oh, I haven't needed the Map for years," he grinned. "We all knew it back to front. But it was a _very_ sad day when Wormtail lost it."

"And the highlight of our Hogwarts career the day _we_ found it," Fred sighed, a little lustily.

"Definitely overshadowed everything else," George said, grinning. "Although, winning the Quidditch Cup last year was pretty spectacular."

"And receiving your O.W.L. results?" Bill said drily, smirking.

"Why would we've anticipated _that_?" Fred gaped, looking appalled.

"What use are they?" George asked incredulously. Glancing at Remus, he added, "You'll be happy to know, one of the few O.W.L.s we got was in Defence."

"I am very happy to hear that," Remus smirked, "since you spent half my lessons skiving, and the other half playing with joke-wands in the back of the classroom."

"Well, we thought it'd be rude if we did that _all_ the time," Fred said, looking aggrieved.

"If we had known the _honour_ we were being granted," George sighed, shaking his head.

"You'd never have been able to get rid of them," Ron spoke up, and they all laughed as they entered the kitchen. Maia glanced around, then froze. Someone bumped into her.

"Maia, what—" She latched on to Sirius' wrist as George walked around her, eyebrows raised. "What's wrong?"

Sirius glanced around. "Oh."

Mrs Weasley was standing at _Maia's_ oven.

"Uh-oh," George said, grinning at the look on Maia's face.

"Mum! You know how you get when Dad interferes in the kitchen?" Fred said conversationally, approaching his mother, placing his hands on her shoulders. "_Step_—_away_—_from_—_Maia's_—_oven_!"

"Whew!" George laughed, grinning at Maia.

"I thought we were about to witness a rendition of the _Ride of the Valkyrie_," Sirius chuckled.

"Mum, you know this is Maia's kitchen," Bill said, in a gentle admonishment, smirking slightly.

"Are you alright?" George chuckled, grinning. "You look like you were contemplating murder."

"She was…she was fondling my spoons," Maia said faintly, and the twins laughed; Sirius' deep, bark-like laugh added to the sound as she disappeared into the pantry.

"I hope this girl's worth it," Fred said, as he watched Maia set out the vegetables and utensils, making Bill tell her, in perfect French, their names as she pointed to each one.

"Yeah, I hope she's not like _Polly_," George grimaced.

"What a head-case," Fred said, shaking his head solemnly.

"The worst was Rachel," George grimaced. Fred hid his eyes behind his hand, shaking his head.

"You were way out of her league, Bill," Ginny spoke up, smiling.

"How do you remember Rachel?" Bill asked, glancing up at Ginny.

"Bill, pay attention, I won't heal your fingers," Maia said, tapping his knuckles with the back of her knife.

"Rachel made an impression," Ginny said darkly. "No matter how young I was."

"Would you like to compose a _list_ of all Weasley-certified-compatible girlfriends that I'm _allowed_ to go out with?" Bill asked. "Just for future reference?" The twins grinned. Fred pulled something out of his bag with a flourish.

"Here's one we prepared earlier," George grinned.

"This is a Holyhead Harpies calendar," Bill said flatly.

"Their _new_ one! Isn't it wonderful!" George sighed, stroking the front page.

"You do realise if Bill was to go out with one of them—" Maia began.

"Or all—" Ginny spoke up, smirking.

"You wouldn't be able to share her," Maia continued, glancing at the twins.

"Hm," Fred frowned.

"That's not what Miss July says…" George grinned, waving the calendar around. Bill set down the knife, took the calendar from George, and promptly started swatting the twins with it, much as Sirius and Jack attacked each other with record-sleeves.

"Ow! _Ow_! Mum!" George squeaked, dodging the calendar as Bill whacked him and Fred with it.

"Bill," Mrs Weasley said warningly.

"I'll give you two a paper-cut you'll never forget!" Bill threatened, thwacking the twins. He asked Maia, "Do you have brothers?"

"No," Maia frowned; she had thought it common knowledge that she was an orphan, Sirius her only remaining family.

"Do you want mine?" Bill asked, gazing earnestly at her. Maia laughed.

"Oh, she does!" George grinned, shooting her a saucy look, puckering a kiss. Maia grinned back, winking.

"So, Bill, who is she?" she asked, glancing at Bill. "Chop them a little finer. That's it."

"Who's who?" Bill asked.

"The girl you're trying to impress by learning how to speak French, and learning how to cook," Maia said.

"Who says I'm trying to impress anyone?" Bill said, eyes widening.

"Oh, Bill," Maia chuckled, shaking her head; she exchanged a look with Mrs Weasley, who smirked.

"What?" Bill blinked.

"A man only ever does things for two reasons; money, and sex. And since you're a _banker_, the former isn't applicable, therefore we must correctly surmise that you are after some slap and tickle," Maia said, and Fred and George burst out laughing at Bill's expression as he stared at Maia.

"Just be careful," Fred said. "You go on some dinner-dates, have a good time under the stands at a Holyhead Harpies game, a little itch gets scratched, and it's all fun and games, but _then_, then, see it gets risky. You quit your high-profile job in the tombs—"

"No!" George gasped.

"—to become a desk-clerk!"

"Never!" Ginny squeaked, eyes widening.

"—you become _docile_ and well-behaved and wear matching socks!"

"Fred, stop! I feel _faint_!" George whimpered, a hand fluttering to his forehead.

"—and then, when she has your dignity and the respect of all your family members hanging by a thread…she asks you…"

"Fred, _no_!" George begged, tears sparkling in his eyes. Tears of mirth; he was shaking in his seat from the strength of his giggles.

"To get—a—_haircut_."

"_NO!_" Eyes widening, George promptly keeled over in his seat; Ginny descended into fake sobs; and Ron fell out of his chair, sliding under the table in a fit of laughter.

"Be quiet, you three," Mrs Weasley admonished, though her lips twitched. Bill gazed around at his family-members, looking utterly shell-shocked.

"Missing the tombs, Bill?" Sirius asked cheerfully, his ankles crossed on the table.

"Help me keep the knife steady, Maia," Bill said, slicing another potato. "I seem to keep missing my wrists." Maia laughed, and, switching to French, told him how to prepare the meal. She thought that, since her aunt had taught her how to speak French by speaking nothing but the language to her, she could start that with Bill, and she had made illustrated labels for everything she could think of, for Bill to go through, and using these, she had also made little cards with words and phrases on them, for him to learn from. He was _very_ quick to learn; Mr Weasley said all his sons were bright, but had different interests, different outlets for their intelligence and creativity. Bill was an excellent curse-breaker, and he employed the same process as breaking down curses to pick up new languages.

Sausages, mash and fresh peas and carrots from her garden (orange as well as purple ones) comprised dinner, and Maia had taught Bill how to make pastry for a strawberry tart, with the sweetened cream-cheese filling.

Sirius checked his watch, jumped up excitedly from his seat, and they left Kreacher under the supervision of Mr and Mrs Weasley as he did the washing-up, the rest of them tearing upstairs to crowd into the den, pushing each other out of the armchairs and off the sofa to get a seat, while Sirius started to set up, ready for the nine p.m. broadcast time they had put on all of the postcard-fliers.

Maia had brought in the comfiest chair from Sirius' supply of furniture, and he now threw himself down in it, crossing his ankles on the desk as he rifled through the line-up of records he had ready to play, setting the first two on the record-player. He checked the sound, grabbing his old headphones and jamming them over his ears, tweaking dials and grabbing magazines, the _Evening Prophet_ and the _Mojo_ book Maia had bought him, filled with colourful stickers annotating pages, snapping open a Butterbeer bottle and taking a swig, popping a sweet into his mouth and grinning out of the window as Ailith approached with her camera.

At exactly nine p.m. by the clock in the studio, Sirius flicked on the broadcasting switch; a little red light glowed by the door, and they suddenly could hear music playing from the speakers in the upper corners of the room, filling the den; Sirius' rich voice then said very quickly, "_It's nine o'clock at night and the dull dudes on the planet are sitting in their slippers, sipping their sherries, but the people who love to rock and to roll are ready to ride a rockin' rollercoaster. You are listening to _Radio Rock_, and I am The Fugitive. I'm counting on you as we count down to ecstasy, and rock all day and all of the night_!" Then the music blazed, _The_ _Kinks_ blasting 'All Day and All of the Night'.

Maia started to dance. The twins offered each other their arms to start waltzing; they ended up shimmying in a circle, one arm draped across the other's front. Cedric and Neville were applauding Sirius; Ron was grinning from ear to ear; and Ailith had her camera out.

When 'All Day and All of the Night' ended, Sirius grinned, grabbing hold of one of the dials, spinning it, and chuckled, "_Fan_tastic_! We're all dancing here in this little slice of musical heaven, how about you? It's the year two thousand and twelve, and we are in the midst of the second-greatest era for Wizard rock-n-roll in British history, yet the _WWN_ plays less than fifteen minutes of rock music a day? And all songs by Celestina Warbeck and the _Weird Sisters_. I had enough of them both by the time I was nine_," Sirius grimaced. "_In light of this atrocity, I feel it's my civic responsibility—no, my _duty_ to my country!—to take it upon myself to educate the general public on the _wonder_ that is rock music. I sit here this evening, broadcasting to you live, in what might be the first step toward a revolution that will see the _Wizarding Wireless Network_ playing rock music all day and all night. As the_ Beach Boys _say, 'Wouldn't It Be Nice'!_" He flicked the other record on, and 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' came on.

Maia sat down, pulling her camera out, and she and Ailith both took a lot of photographs, not just of Sirius but of everyone in the den. Only she, Ailith and Sirius could sing along to the Muggle songs; but they pulled out the board-games and Kreacher appeared with a tray filled with glasses of mulled cider and a big bowl of fresh sweet popcorn, and everyone sat, and listened, and played. When the _Beach_ _Boys_ ended, Sirius' voice filtered as clearly as if he was speaking directly to them, sitting in the studio with his ankles crossed on the desk, earphones clamped on, wearing a pair of old sunglasses, hands folded over his stomach.

"_Join me for the next couple of hours, while I play definitive Wizard and Muggle rock. We'll be going through all the classics; _Elvis,AC/DC_, _Led Zeppelin_, _Ball-Gag and Shackles_, _The Rolling Stones_, _Patchwork Snidget Complex_, _The Cure,Driftaway Kelpies_, _KISS_, _Iggy Pop_, _Aerosmith_ and my personal favourite, _The Flying Horklump Brigade_, and many other fantastic acts to have come out of the last forty years of rock-n-roll, as well as a few of the rising stars of the new music-scene dominating the stages of the _Brass Jobberknoll_ and the _Weeping Sunflower," Sirius said over the wireless. "_And just a shout-out before we begin; most, in fact all of the Wizard records you hear tonight are available at _Mal's Record Shack_ in Diagon Alley. And don't forget to invest in limited-stock _Radio Rock_ badges, also available there; keep me in Butterbeer, peanut-brittle and caramel-covered marshmallow mousse balls! Man cannot live on Dusty Springfield alone! And, speaking of balls, here's the single first released by _Ball-Gag and Shackles_ back in '96. One of the best years of my life. And one of the best gigs, actually… One of the lead-bassist's groupies dumped him and went home with me…and her friend, actually_," Sirius added thoughtfully, with a soft chuckle deep in his throat. "_Now that memory gets my motor running_—_and after_ Ball-Gag and Shackles _we'll be visiting _Steppenwolf_! Sounds of my adolescence! If you have any songs you particularly want to hear over the wireless, Muggle or Wizard, send requests to 'The Fugitive' at _Radio Rock_. Your owls will find me! Now_—Ball-Gag and Shackles, _formed in 1983, after twice-replacing their drummer and gaining a harpist after Stubs McGrew lost a lung and had to give up the bagpipes, this is the first single released with the now-notorious line-up that has dominated the music scene since the early Nineties. Here it is_…"

Maia glanced at Remus, who was sipping his cider, his eyes warm and sparkling as he gazed through the window at Sirius, who was busy preparing the next records in his line-up, opening _Mojo_ to the pages he had marked, flicking open magazines and the _Evening Prophet_, reaching around the little studio. Remus smiled at her warmly.

"You know you've created a monster," Remus said, on the point of a grin, the closest Maia had ever seen him to one.

"He's a natural," Maia said warmly, smiling at Sirius through the window.

"He's had no-one to talk to for fourteen years," Remus said softly, a sad smile making his eyes glitter. "Now he's speaking to thousands at once!" As the Weasley twins and Ron glanced at Remus, he chuckled. "When we were in third-year, James bet Sirius that he couldn't commentate the Slytherin versus Gryffindor Quidditch match, with a euphemism every minute for ten minutes."

"Did he do it?"

"Oh, he got one in every thirty seconds," Remus chuckled. "I couldn't look at a broomstick the same way again for about six months. James had to catch Sirius when he fell out of the stands, after Minerva tried to seize the megaphone from him…" He shook his head, laughing, but then he looked crestfallen for a moment, staring at Sirius through the window. He looked…desolated.

Maia didn't think she had ever had a friendship like the one Remus had shared with both Sirius and James Potter. But she had lost her aunt, the only person in the world she had ever loved, ever known; so she could imagine how it had felt for Remus, fourteen years ago, to realise not just that James and Lily Potter were gone, but that Sirius was too, and Pettigrew, despite the fact that he had believed the wrong person to be the traitor. Now Remus had one of his best-friends back. But James and Lily were still gone, and Pettigrew had betrayed them all. He was the reason they had all been broken.

But that rupture, the terrible, _terrible_ things that had happened to the Marauders, was beginning to mend. Beginning; and it would be a long process, but Maia could already see _life_ returning to these two inconsolably lonely, broken men. As she listened to the excitement and enthusiasm in Sirius' voice as he broadcasted to the entire _country_, talking about the music he had loved as a teenager, music that had gotten him through some of the worst days of the War, she saw him grin more and more, and Remus' smiles became warmer and more vibrant, not his usual quiet, sombre smiles.

Sirius broadcasted for two hours; he played an amazing array of music, Muggle classics Maia had long adored and obscure Wizard rock bands, little-known singers and bands that filled stadiums, twenty-five-piece bands and the fresh, clear voices of young witches, and he chatted about them with so much enthusiasm it was infectious, and the songs were lively, frantic and made them laugh and dance, goofing about. Sirius didn't blather on; he didn't fill the time-slots with pointless advertisements for different wireless shows, or broadcasters; the news didn't cut in every ten minutes, nor did traffic-reports. He took five minutes to chat about the kinds of things they would hear him talk about in future broadcasts, werewolf rights and eradicating pro-pureblood laws, ridding Azkaban of Dementors and removing corrosive people like Umbridge from their positions at the Ministry, and encouraged people to send in their thoughts about those specific subjects.

At eleven p.m., Sirius said goodbye, "_I look forward to doing this again! So join me, The Fugitive, at 203 metres on the medium wireless band. We'll be starting you off tomorrow at _three_ p.m. with my mate Jack, and then I'll be back with you for another two hours—until then, I leave you in the capable hands of motor-mouth Vittorio, who'll be taking you through Aaron Neville, Marvin Gaye and the inimitable Dusty Springfield, among others. So thank you, and goodnight, but keep listening! Here's one last song from me, I think it sums up the evening so far! Fugitive out!_" And while 'You Shook Me All Night Long' by _AC/DC_ played, Sirius surrendered his chair and the record-players to Vittorio, who appeared with his selection of records, wearing his sunglasses and silent as ever.

Sirius emerged from the studio to tumultuous applause provided by the twins; Ginny and Neville were both grinning, and Cedric was chuckling; as the twins did a sort of celebratory war-dance around Sirius, chanting his name, Sirius chuckled deeply and threw himself down onto the sofa, resting his head on Ailith's shoulder. She smiled and let him, and Tonks curled up on the sofa on his other side, grinning from ear to ear.

"I hope Mum was listening!" she said happily. "You were amazing!"

"Have fun?" Ailith asked Sirius, tracing her fingertips through his curling hair.

"I did. I had no idea talking so much could take it out of you!" Sirius yawned, looking sleepy and content. Maia, who had been working on her watercolours and on the _Talon_ headings on a sheet of narrower A3-sized parchment and a list of writing prompts for the others, jumped when the door to the den burst open.

"Why aren't you all in bed?!" Mrs Weasley demanded, glaring around.

"We have just witnessed an historic moment in our nation's future history!" George grinned.

"And you and Dad were downstairs sipping sherry," Fred said, shaking his head solemnly, and Maia chuckled, remembering what Sirius had said about the "dull dudes" sitting in their slippers.

"Up to bed, all of you!" Mrs Weasley frowned. Maia jumped; there was instant uproar!

"We're _seventeen_, Mum—"

"—Why should I?!—"

"It's the _summer holidays_!"

"—I want to listen to the wireless!"

"—isn't a _prison_, you know—"

"—we're not _three_ anymore!"

"You're such a _square_!"

"If Maia isn't going up to bed, _I'm_ not," Ginny said stubbornly, settling into the sofa beside Maia and glaring at her mother, Neville dozing on her other side.

"We've still got to finish our game!" the twins cried from the large round table, where they were working their way through a game of _Monopoly_.

"Fine! _Fine_!" Mrs Weasley shouted over the babble. "Stay down here, then. Woe betide you if you don't get up tomorrow."

"Honestly, you'd think we'd never pulled all-nighters to get homework done after Quidditch practice," Fred scowled, as Mrs Weasley bustled out of the room.

"We've never done that," George said, glancing at his twin.

"Well, I meant, we do _some_ work after Quidditch practices," Fred shrugged.

"And, that party we had in the common-room after Gryffindor won against Ravenclaw last year went until three a.m.!" Ginny grinned.

"Yeah, and if Sirius hadn't gate-crashed we could've gone on till dawn!" George grinned.

"An almost-knifing kind of put a chill on the atmosphere," Fred said, nodding, as he and George checked their property cards.

"If Ron hadn't started yelling, I would've got the man I was _trying_ to kill," Sirius said, glancing over. "All that yelling put me off!"

"Hope you're proud of yourself, Ronnie," George said. "Squealing like a little tiny girl!"

"You prevented the murder of a traitor who betrayed your best-friend's parents to their deaths," Fred sighed. The twins shook their heads, gazing solemnly at Ron.

"Shut up!"

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: How did you enjoy? I wanted to turn Grimmauld Place into a home Sirius had always wished it to be. More twins in the next chapter.


	18. Chapter 18

**A.N.**: More of the twins! Yay. They are delicious, I must say; I keep envisioning Liam Hemsworth as the twins. That would put Chris Hemsworth in Bill Weasley's dragon-hide boots. _Mm_… This is sort of a glimpse of what the twins' and Maia's relationship will be like, and this chapter features the first set of responses to Sirius' wireless broadcast; Radio Rock will be very important later, as will…well, most of what I'm writing! Maia's stuff, some of the other Order members…

I've got good stuff planned for Maia's parents; her father was Regulus, of course, and a Death Eater defector; her mother was in the Order, and died very young. And they're _very_ important. We've still got Kreacher's revelations to come, too; Maia and Sirius find out what happened to Regulus.

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_18_

* * *

><p>Maia woke early the next morning, glad she had beaten Mrs Weasley to the kitchen. It was<em> her<em> kitchen; she wouldn't have anyone interfering with the system she had perfected over the last month. Last night, she had shown the Weasleys to their various bedrooms, and after Tonks and Ailith had made for home, the rest of them had turned in. Maia had things to do, but she was surprised to find the twins already sitting in the kitchen when she came downstairs, still in her nightie but ready to start the day.

"Morning," Maia said, glancing at the table, where the twins had a stack of fat, leather-bound books filled with thick, rough-edged parchment, some of which were open to incredibly detailed and colourful drawings annotated with untidy scribbles, lists and symbols. There were several pouches, colourful tins and small card boxes scattered on the table, and at her arrival the twins both jumped, ready to throw everything out of sight. When they realised it was her, they relaxed.

"Morning," George grinned softly.

"You're up early," she said, pointing her wand at the kettle, which started piping steam.

"So are you!" Fred remarked.

"I'm always up early," Maia said, flicking her wand at the tea-service, and it levitated over to the table. "Hungry?"

"Starving," the twins said together, and Maia smiled as she set about making her _croque_ _madame_ _muffins_ for breakfast.

"So, were those your workbooks?" Maia asked, glancing at the table, which now featured only one large book, Fred having tucked everything else away.

"Yeah, they were," George nodded.

"And the boxes, packaging?" Maia asked.

"The blank canvases for packaging," Fred said. "We're experimenting, to see which product branding is the most effective."

"But don't tell Mum about any of this," George said, glancing at the stairwell. "She'll kill us."

"So you're really doing all of this in secret?" Maia said, glancing at the twins as she added fresh ham to the bread-lined muffin-cups.

"Yeah," the twins nodded.

"Have to," George added.

"Or, as we said, Mum'd kill us," Fred sighed.

"She doesn't want you inventing?" Maia guessed.

"She doesn't want us inventing joke-stuff," George said, frowning over at her. "Do you need any help?"

"No, thank you," Maia smiled over at him. "It's easiest if you just let me get on and do things myself."

"You and Mum are gonna be butting heads over dominance in here," Fred said, grinning lazily as he watched her.

"I thought your mother would be awake by now," Maia said, glancing at the stairwell.

"She'll probably be down in a minute," Fred said idly. "George and I had ideas to go over. Actually, you can help us."

"Me?"

"Yes. You like those games, _Monopoly_ and _Clue_," George said, eyeing her as she cracked an egg and added the yolk and a little of the white to the top of each of the _croque_ _madame_ _muffins_.

"I do," Maia nodded.

"George and I were thinking about doing our own Wizard spin on them," Fred said, glancing at her. George unfolded a large square bit of parchment, and Maia stared, dusting her hands off after putting a spoonful of béchamel in each muffin-cup, grating cheese over them, and putting the tins in the oven, she peered closer as George spread the parchment out flat.

"This is just a preliminary sketch," George said, spreading the parchment neatly. "Something we knocked up last night when we first thought of it." Maia glanced at George as she climbed into the chair next to him, turning to gaze at the parchment as she sipped her tea.

"_Preliminary_?!" Maia blurted, gazing at the square of parchment. It was… "It's _Monopoly_, but…that's Diagon Alley?" Instead of the colourful blocks at the top of each 'property', there were illustrations of the real shops in Diagon Alley, even Mal's record-shop, and umbrellas on a cobblestone path in front of Florean Fortescue's. The shops all tumbled into the cobblestone centre, which was dotted with unfinished sketches, but two pentagons with intricate borders were coloured in with curling letters dictating where the Chance cards went.

"And Hogsmeade," Fred said, indicating a few shops in one corner, "and the Ministry of Magic." He indicated what looked like a golden fountain, around which was a sort of spiral of 'offices'.

"It's not _really_ _Monopoly_ for wizards," George said. "We've taken the basic principles and put our own spin on things, but we liked the way the board was set out, and buying up the shops and things."

"You two did this _last night_?" Maia said, glancing up; some of the drawings were incredibly detailed and beautifully coloured.

"George did the drawings, after I went to bed," Fred said, yawning.

"We thought we'd make the buildings three-dimensional," George said. "When you open the board, they'll pop up. I'll work on them later…"

"This is…you did this?" Maia asked, smiling as she gazed at the parchment. She glanced at George, who shrugged.

"And we thought about doing a Hogwarts _Clue_. 'Who killed Severus Snape'?" Fred smirked.

"Or Moaning Myrtle," George snorted softly.

"And who Petrified Mrs Norris," Fred grinned.

"Or stabbed the Bloody Baron."

Together, they both exclaimed, "_Harry_!"

"Mate, if we could dream up some games about Harry's adventures," Fred grinned, rubbing his hands together.

"He'd never go for it," George shook his head.

"C'mon, he gave us our start-up capital," Fred grinned, and Maia glanced up, eyebrow raised.

"Don't tell Mum," George half-whispered. "Harry's our mate; we don't want to see him scalped because of us."

"Right," Maia chuckled softly. Fred started laughing to himself.

"What?" George asked.

"Harry…action-figure," Fred giggled. George's face lit up gleefully, grinning.

"He'd die of mortification!" he laughed. But then a thoughtful expression came over his face. "We could do a Basilisk, Dad's flying Anglia, his _Firebolt_, a Hungarian Horntail, the maze…"

"Triwizard Tournament special-edition dolls!" Fred giggled to himself. "We could do one for Viktor Krum, and old Fleur Delacour." The twins giggled to themselves, before George lugged out a huge workbook and a very old, almost empty tin of solid watercolours, and a stained wooden stylus and a pot of ink.

"So what would you use as the pieces?" Maia asked, drawing the twins' attention back to the parchment, as George, still giggling silently to himself, started painting several images. "You know, the dog and the top-hat…"

"We thought…the Hogwarts Express, a dragon, a Snitch, a little person on a broom—they'd all be animated, of course," George said, taking a smaller piece of parchment out from the first fat workbook, unfolding it to show Maia the minutely-detailed gold tokens. "And I read a biography on the Hogwarts founders, and they each had a famous relic they left behind; Gryffindor's was a sword, which is in Dumbledore's office. Rowena Ravenclaw apparently had a diadem; Slytherin gave his daughter or wife a locket; and Helga Hufflepuff had a golden two-handled cup. All of the others but Gryffindor's sword were lost centuries ago… But I thought they might be cool for identifying tokens—except the diadem, and the locket. Sound a bit boring. We could use a hippogriff or a sphinx or something instead. And a phoenix."

"That sounds cool," Maia smiled. "Listen, I've actually been thinking about…well, your shop. Bill said you spend a lot of time inventing in your bedrooms."

"Yeah," George said, frowning subtly.

"Well, there are lots of rooms that we've been in the process of clearing out," Maia said. "Some of them have a lot of space, and quite a few empty cabinets and things. You're welcome to use some of them as workshops."

"What about Mum stumbling into them by accident?" Fred asked.

"Well, I've been reading _Hogwarts: A History_," Maia said, and didn't miss the smirk the twins exchanged. "The entrances to all of the common-rooms are protected by passwords. I thought we could do something like that. There's a huge mirror upstairs that would work well if we used it to conceal a doorway."

"Brilliant," George grinned.

"Maybe one of the attic-rooms," Maia suggested thoughtfully. "And I'm sure there's an apothecary cabinet or two up in the storage-rooms that you could use to organise your ingredients and some of your smaller merchandise."

"Would Sirius mind?" George asked.

"I'm sure he wouldn't," Maia said. "I was actually thinking… Well, Cedric reminded me of it, but there's a book I loved when I was little, and they have their own secret newspaper, and they meet every week in the attic, sharing their articles, drinking tea, that sort of thing, so I was thinking of turning one of the attic rooms into a sort of den, password-protected, where we can go to get away from the adults."

"Away from _Mum_, you mean," Fred smirked. "You've spent enough time around her to notice how she is."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Maia smirked, and the twins grinned.

"Well, Sirius isn't like that," George sighed. "I reckon he's alright. I can't _believe_ he and Lupin were the Marauders… Thanks, for offering the attic. It'd be just out-of-the-way enough that Mum'd never go up there."

"Will you show me some of the things you've finished?" Maia asked curiously. "Gambol & Jape's is amazing; I can't wait to see what _you've_ come up with. Bill reckons you'll put them out of business." Neville had suggested they stop by in _Zonko's_ after their next in-greenhouse afternoon with Professor Sprout, but she couldn't help wondering what the limits were to magical invention.

"If you'd like," George said thoughtfully. "Word is you've got a few ideas, too."

"Oh," Maia said softly, fidgeting in her seat. "About a few things, I'm not sure they'd be any good to consider putting in a joke-shop's inventory."

"You never know," Fred said. "The truly imaginative can creative mayhem out of the mundane and innocuous."

"Well, it depends what products you've already come up with," Maia said. The thought crossed her mind to ask the twins about supplying their shop with some of the cosmetics she was working on, or her fairytales in a special corner—she was sure they could sell potions that turned unwitting drinkers into frogs, as in _The Frog Prince_—and her pocket-wirelesses. But they weren't _really_ joke-shop material. "Some of my ideas are mostly aimed towards the _female_ teenaged Wizarding population, and few girls are, well…"

"Troublemakers who'd buy joke-items," Fred supplied, nodding. "It's a shame our recently-great nation has come to this. To think…"

"We sat in a Marauder's classroom for a year without suspecting," George said, his chin perched on his curled palm, eyes expressive as he gazed at the tabletop. "It's perfect, actually," he added thoughtfully, reaching absently for the teacup Maia passed him. Maia couldn't help notice that both the twins had incredibly strong arms and straight, broad shoulders. George had really lovely, large hands and strong fingers, long and clever. "Beneath that quiet, studious exterior, he was at heart one of the greatest mischief-makers in Hogwarts' recent history."

"We should only hope to make so lasting an impression on future generations of Hogwarts' finest," Fred sighed, yawning; Maia wondered how long they had been up for, they both looked tired, George more so than Fred. Glancing from one to the other, Maia couldn't help wondering…

"You're not going to mass-produce the Marauder's Map, are you?" she asked hesitantly. That seemed to wake the twins up a little.

"Mass-produce?"

"We dabbled with the idea—"

"Flirted to the very edges of impropriety—"

"Made plans, set the date—"

"And decided it would take the _fun_ out of it all," George said, rubbing his face and canting his head to one side as he gazed at her. "The thrill of potentially being caught makes the risk worthwhile." He sounded like Sirius.

"Besides, Harry's got the Map now, no way to strip it for the specific magic used to create it," Fred added.

"We'd never compromise such a priceless historical document for the sake of finding out its specific magical properties," George said, glancing at his twin.

"We wouldn't?"

"_No_."

Preparing the rest of the breakfast spread for a full house, Maia retrieved her tiny glass Sneakoscope and set it on the table, while the twins continued to work out of their enormous leather-bound workbook and George's drawings, his new paintings for Triwizard Tournament action-figures; the Sneakoscope, they used to alert them to their mother's approach, thankful that Maia had had the presence of mind while visiting _Gambol & Jape's_ not to get hooked in by the fireworks and joke-cosmetics and bought something useful, because by the time Mrs Weasley bustled down the stairs in a quilted dressing-gown, the twins were both stood at the range, flipping sausages and making sure the toast didn't burn. Mrs Weasley turned shrewd eyes onto her twin sons, but made no comment of their helpfulness as George supplied her with a cup of tea.

Perhaps she thought they were trying to compensate for Percy being so nasty.

Gradually, everyone else started trickling downstairs, in varying degrees of dress and wakefulness. Nobody seemed really to know what to do with themselves, being, besides the Weasley family, almost complete strangers. The entire house gathered for breakfast; Mrs Weasley said it would probably be the only time all her children were downstairs and ready to eat before their father had to get off to the Ministry. Remus and Sirius admitted Ailith, who was on her way to work and wanted to drop off a set of books and a magazine to Maia, and the kitchen became louder the more people woke up with bellies full of food. Setting the plates and frying-pans to wash in the sink, Maia was stood at the window when the first of the post-owls arrived.

The delivery of the _Daily_ _Prophet_ was swiftly followed by the arrival of no fewer than a dozen other owls, each jostling and hooting indignantly for her attention as they soared into the kitchen.

"What's all this for?" Ginny wondered aloud, as Maia took several envelopes and scrolls from the owls, stooping quickly to pick up a letter one of the other owls had unceremoniously dropped. Looking over the addressees on some of the letters, Maia separated two out to Remus, and paused, raising her eyebrows, at the other letters, addressed to _The Fugitive, Radio Rock_.

"Sirius, they're for you," she said, glancing up at her uncle.

"Me?"

"They must be responses to your broadcast," Maia said, staring down at the envelopes. She had put a lot of energy into promoting _Radio Rock_, had set up everything so all Sirius had to do was turn the equipment on and start playing records, and there had never been a moment's doubt, to Maia at least, that people would listen to the broadcast. Here in her hands was evidence that people had listened, and that they had something to say about what they had heard. Responses to actions like the one she had orchestrated for Sirius were always incredibly gratifying.

"None of them are Howlers," Ron remarked, in between shovelling mouthfuls of scrambled eggs, sausage and baked-beans into his mouth. "Can't be anything too nasty."

"Hand them over," Sirius grinned, and as Maia set the envelopes down on the table in front of Sirius, Ginny called her back over to the window.

"There's _more_!"

"Blimey!" George climbed up from his seat at the table, peering through the open window into the sun-drenched square;

"You'd think people had something better to do of a morning than send fan-mail," Mrs Weasley said thoughtfully, sipping her tea. "Especially after that so-called _music_ you played, Sirius." Behind Mrs Weasley's back, Sirius motioned that she was a 'square'; Maia laughed as no fewer than another dozen owls landed on the windowsill in quick succession, offering their legs to remove letters, or dropping them onto the draining-board before soaring off.

"Won't all these owls look suspicious flying around the square?" George asked, as he collected another three envelopes, hissing and shaking his hand when a particularly nasty-looking Eagle Owl took a nip at his finger.

"And how did they know how to find you, Sirius?" Maia asked wonderingly; she still hadn't figured out Owl Post.

"This bloke thinks you have too much free time," Fred said, smirking, as he waved a letter around. Sirius snorted, as he slit open another envelope. "But he also asks that you play some Tchaikovsky and Elgar, whoever they are."

"Tchaikovsky is a _stunning_ composer," Maia said, over her shoulder, taking letters from owls that had just descended on the square. "He wrote a lot of ballets. And Elgar wrote 'Nimrod', it's so _moving_, it reminds me of the war veterans every time I hear it."

"This witch says she doesn't know why it took someone so long to start their own broadcast, with the _Wizarding Wireless Network_ dominating the wireless the last half-century," Mr Weasley said, peering through his spectacles at the letter in front of him. "Though she's not entirely sure about your taste in music, she's never heard half the Wizard bands, let alone the Muggle ones, she does ask that you play _ABBA_ again, because she and her granddaughter loved dancing to it last night."

"This bloke wants to know where you're going with your liberal political activist agenda," Ron said, swallowing after a mouthful of scrambled egg. "He says he could listen to _The_ _Cure_ and _The Flying Horklump Brigade_ all day, but if he's going to have his ear chatted off about politics, he's not sure whether he'll tune in. But then he says, if you're discussing ways to eradicate pro-pureblood laws, he's all for investing in _Radio_ _Rock_."

"Here's one—hey, this is from Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan!" Ginny said, eyebrows rising. "They say they loved hearing all Dean's favourite Muggle bands alongside _The Rapacious Healers_ and _The Puffskeins_, and they've put in a list of suggestions for songs you should play in your next broadcast."

"Yeah, this witch has done the same thing—says she bought a Muggle radio just so she could listen to the records her parents used to play when she was younger, but now she hopes she doesn't have to, if you'll play _Electric Light Orchestra_, _Mike +_ _The Mechanics_, _Led_ _Zeppelin_, the _Bee Gees_ and _Eurythmics_. She also asks that you play some Mendelssohn and 'Nessun Dorma', and do you have the soundtrack to _Grease_?"

"Sirius, you've got your first groupie," Maia said, a slow smile spreading across her face as she glanced up from the letter she had just opened. George leaned in to read the letter, and he whipped the enclosed photograph out of the envelope.

"_Wow_!" he gaped, a grin making his eyes glitter as his eyebrows rose. "This _has_ to go up on the studio-wall!" Maia, giggling softly, passed Sirius the letter, while Fred and Ron took turns snatching the photograph from each other, ogling the photograph.

"Now, boys," Mr Weasley said disapprovingly, frowning as he took the picture from Ron. He spoiled the scolding by giving the photograph a double-take, blinking dazedly, and passing it to Sirius.

"This wizard wants Jimi Hendrix. And John Lee Hooker."

"This witch wants to know if you'll play her something from _The_ _Blues_ _Brothers_," Ailith said softly, smiling as she handed Sirius the letter.

"And this witch wants to know if you were a John Hughes fan, and if you could play music that is featured either in _Sixteen Candles_, _Ferris Bueller_, _Breakfast Club_ or from the films _Dazed and Confused_ and anything by Johnny Cash and Elvis."

"This witch says her mum made her listen to a Josh Groban CD, and that although he's not specifically _rock_, she'd love to hear you dedicate 'You Raise Me Up' in, and I quote, '_that sultry voice of yours_'," Maia smirked.

"Who's _Judy Garland_?" Ginny asked, frowning at a letter. Maia stared at her, before frowning and taking the letter from her; it featured a list of the writer's favourite Muggle films, including several musicals, and the songs they wanted to hear played, both from the films and from her favourite records from her youth.

"_A Star is Born_, _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers_, _The Sound of Music_, _Funny Girl_, _My Fair Lady_," she said, making a thoughtful noise.

"This wizard had a Muggle sister who listened to Madonna all the time," Fred said, frowning at a letter. "He says could you play some of her songs, his sister passed away recently, and Madonna reminds him of when they were kids."

"This bloke loves Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding and _The Drifters_," George said, waving his letter.

"And this witch asks for early Michael Jackson, _Queen_ and _AC/DC_, Patsy Cline, anything from _Dirty Dancing_ and, she says she knows she'll lose major cool-points for asking, but anything they performed on _Glee_," Ginny said, her forehead crinkling. "I have no idea who any of these people are."

"This bloke wants _Deep Purple_, _The Clash_, _The Kinks_ and Dusty Springfield," Mr Weasley said, peering down at a letter through his glasses. "Dusty Springfield… Didn't you put her on last night, Sirius?"

"Vittorio did," Sirius nodded.

"Fabulous voice," Mr Weasley nodded.

"Oh, I did like her," Mrs Weasley nodded, clicking away with her knitting while Kreacher cleared away the rest of the empty plates.

"You know, you could do a midday or early-afternoon broadcast for musicals and classical music," Maia said thoughtfully, looking over some other letters, all full of requests and praise for Sirius' efforts. "So it doesn't have to cut into your rock and punk time."

"Who would broadcast?" Sirius asked. "Musicals were never my forte. Maybe you could do a segment, Maia. You love classical music as much as _The_ _Kinks_ and Sid Vicious. And you know films and Muggle television."

"True," Maia sighed. "I wouldn't know what to say," she said, shuffling some papers. "I never listen to the radio; it's all advertisements and drivel."

"Well, luckily we have no sponsors to advertise," Sirius said drily, shooting her a grin. "And I don't like the news. Maybe you could help clear up Ginny's confusion over _Dirty Dancing_."

"A crime, not knowing who Patrick Swayze is," Maia tutted, shaking her head. "Or Judy Garland!"

"Maia, do you have any music from _Disney_ films?" Sirius asked. Maia paused, thinking. She did have every record—_record_, never a CD—from every _Disney_ and _Disney-Pixar_ animated film every released, from _Snow_ _White_ to _The Princess and the Frog_. Mostly because her mother had bought every single one, until Maia had gone to live with her aunt, who had followed the tradition, and Maia had started to buy the new ones. But she never…she never really listened to them. She bought them because once upon a time, her mother had too. It was one of the only things she knew about her mother, the only other that she had written Maia's storybook, 'Bedtime for Baby Star', which her father had illustrated. "This woman says she'd love to have 'You've Got a Friend in Me' from _Toy Story_ dedicated to her son and nephew."

"I… I do," she said cautiously. "My mother bought them." Sirius gave her a quiet, thoughtful look, then nodded.

"And do you have any of the score from _Doctor_ _Who_, because this woman can't get the first episode with Matt Smith out of her head," Sirius said. "Her nephew made her watch it, and she's been forced to change her entire opinion on bowties."

"I have all the music for _Doctor Who_," Maia laughed. Glancing up at Sirius, she asked, "Is Opal stopping by today? She'd probably love a listen… I should probably bring out my record-collection, so you can go through and see what you need."

"Thanks," Sirius grinned. "I don't know about Opie; I can't remember when her grandparents are going on holiday."

"Oh dear," Ailith sighed, looking over a letter. "The first request for a Wall of Shame."

"Britney Spears?"

"Celine Dion."

"Mm… 'My Heart Will Go On'?"

"What else is there?"

"Here's a request for that _Disney_ person you mentioned," George said, glancing at Sirius. "This wizard says he was always terrified of Cruella De Vil from _101 Dalmations_, but he's older now and needs to face his fears. And also, can you play some _Metallica_."

"I've got a request for _Aerosmith_," Fred said. "_Red Hot Chili Peppers_ and _Rancid_."

"This wizard says he's unsure who would win in a Battle of the Bands, _The Flying Horklump Brigade_, or _The Rolling Stones_," Maia smiled. "But he's—oh, that's nice of him! He's put in a ten-Galleon money-order to buy some more records, because you've managed to do what he's spent the last thirty years wishing he'd done, and this is his way of contributing. He just asks that you dedicate a song by the _Beach_ _Boys_ to him during your next broadcast, because he'll have _Radio Rock_ playing on his wireless for the rest of his life, even at his funeral."

"Wow," Ron's eyebrows flew up. "That's dedication."

"He gave us ten Galleons?" Sirius asked curiously, and Maia handed him the money-order.

"Have you asked Jack to make a list of all the records in his collection that you should buy copies of?" Maia asked Sirius. "His Muggle collection, I mean. You've missed fourteen years. I mean, the music-industry's gone downhill since the Nineties, but still, there are a few gems."

"Yeah, he's making a list, and bringing me any of his doubles," Sirius nodded.

"I can go to that record-store right outside Diagon Alley for you," Maia said, remembering the small shop dedicated solely to records.

"Have a look and see what you've got, first," Sirius said, and Maia nodded. "Well, at least I've got some of my broadcast filled! Any more requests?"

"There's a marriage-proposal for Vittorio," George said, raising his eyebrows at another photograph. He cleared his throat, blushing, and handed the photograph to Fred. "Beautiful eyes." Maia laughed, shaking her head, and they all spent a few more minutes going through Sirius' fan-mail, separating out the 'squares' who had dared to send a note badmouthing him—Maia suggested she send a reply laced with Bulbadox Powder or undiluted Bubotuba pus, to the twins' dewy-eyed admiration—and two official-looking letters from wizards who represented _Circe's Swine_ and the _Driftaway Kelpies_, wanting Sirius to advertise the bands' new material as well as offering to sponsor him to play their back-catalogue.

Maia supposed the owls knew to bring post to locations as well as people, and that, without Jack's surname or Vittorio's, the owls sourced the location of _Radio Rock_ so the letters could be distributed, because over the course of the morning, more post arrived for Sirius, as well as letters, requests and admiration for Vittorio and Jack.

Things had got off to a good start with the Weasley clan; a full breakfast, and helping Sirius go through his post took up much of the morning, only because Sirius and Maia thought it a good idea to sit the Weasleys down and force them to listen to a few of the requested Muggle bands, and Maia wrote down the names of the films and television-shows people requested soundtracks from, and made a point to search Sirius' film-reel inventory for the films, to start educating Ginny on who Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn and Julie Roberts were.

With the prospect of going to see the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ perform in a Battle of the Bands—the _final_, against the _Perfumed Gobstones_, _Anti-Pureblood League_ and the _Patchwork Snidget Complex_—that evening, and with Mr Weasley and Ailith going off to work, Remus going off to visit several of his contacts, the congregation in the kitchen filtered down to the teenaged crowd, and Sirius.

For the first morning with everyone in the house, almost total strangers, everyone rubbed along well. Giggling over what to write in response to Sirius' more amorous listeners, helping Sirius sort out lists of songs for the afternoon's broadcast, they ate their way through the morning, with "second-breakfast" and elevenses; lunch was served in the den, helping Sirius go through records, requesting music for the afternoon broadcast, setting up the projector to watch _Grease_ when they returned from Diagon Alley.

When Mrs Weasley went upstairs for a nap—she was taking the overnight shift 'on duty', wherever that was and whatever it entailed—everything suddenly stopped for a moment, pausing for breath. It was the deep breath before the storm.

"Can you show us those attic rooms?" George asked, loping over to her after checking the gallery, hearing the soft click of Mr and Mrs Weasley's bedroom-door closing.

"And when are we going to Diagon Alley?" Ginny asked curiously. "I really need to go to Gladrag's."

"You haven't got any money," George pointed out.

"And we have purchases we need to make," Fred said, and George nodded.

"I'll show you the attics, and then we can go," Maia said. "Sirius, will you be coming with us?"

"No, I should stay here and get things ready for this afternoon," Sirius said, dusting his hands of the icing-sugar she had sprinkled on a Victoria sponge-cake. He had a clipboard in front of him, several of the letters he had received clamped onto it, with notes attached on slivers of parchment—Maia made a mental note to look in the stationery shop and see if there was anything equivalent to _Post-It_ notes for Sirius to use—and was scribbling down notes on another piece of parchment, topics he wanted to discuss, bits of history for specific bands, responses to articles in the _Daily_ _Prophet_.

Maia had suggested Sirius do competitions that could encourage his audience to interact with the station, and to do fun things, like asking people for 'Confessions', and stories, the more embarrassing and hilarious, the better. They could offer _Radio Rock_ merchandise, which Sirius had put Maia in charge of designing, t-shirts and banners—he had even suggested she design a special pocket-wireless model with _Radio Rock_'s emblem, which they could send to big winners.

"I was thinking, you know you asked me to design t-shirts for _Radio Rock_," Maia said, pausing as she gathered up an armful of her things to take up to her room.

"Yep."

"What if you made a competition of it?" Maia said. "Have listeners send in designs, and the one you like the most can be turned into some of the merchandise."

"Alongside your stuff," Sirius said thoughtfully. "We could make them special-edition."

"I can ask Mal if he'd sell some," Maia suggested. "And we could ask Ailith how much it would cost to put an ad in the _Prophet_ to promote the merchandise." The twins, conferring quietly over an enormous leather workbook, glanced up.

"We can tell you the details on that," Fred said.

"We wanted to put an ad in the _Prophet_," George said, and they exchanged a wide-eyed, delighted look. "But maybe we could coerce you to advertise _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes _on _Radio Rock_, Sirius?"

"A lot safer; Mum doesn't like the music, so she won't listen," Fred said, George nodding in agreement before he'd even finished speaking.

"And she still reads the _Prophet_," George sighed, biting his lip thoughtfully. He glanced over at Sirius. "If you could advertise us during your broadcasts, we could put a section in our catalogue about the _Radio_ _Rock_ merchandise."

"That's what you call a Win-Win situation," Sirius grinned idly, glancing up from his clipboard. "Of course, you should probably give me some of your finished products; I wouldn't want to advertise without knowing everything about the product. And a copy of your catalogue?"

"We haven't finished that yet," Fred said. "George is still working on the details, but we've got our order-forms finished."

"We're running the business as an owl-order service at the moment," George said. "The catalogue should feature our entire inventory, but we're still working on a lot of new things and—" He broke off, glancing at Maia. "Well, we're considering our options for expanding our inventory."

"If I work putting together the orders for owls to deliver," Ginny said, unfolding off the sofa, "will you pay me a wage?"

"You mean, you wouldn't help because you're our sister and you'd be doing us a favour out of the goodness of your heart?" George frowned.

"If I demand payment, it's your own fault. Everything I know, I learned from you two," Ginny remarked. "You never used to help Percy de-gnome the garden unless he paid you a percentage of his pocket-money."

"Still owes us."

"Bastard."

"Maybe we can pop in and give our dear older-brother the chance to settle his debts," Fred growled softly.

"I'll give him something," George murmured under his breath, his expression stormy as he fiddled absently with his wand.

"Boys, please don't go and curse your brother," Sirius said, sighing heavily, setting his clipboard down.

"You don't think he deserves it?"

"Oh, I'm sure he does," Sirius said idly. "But you get someone _else_, someone dissociated from you or Percy to curse him, that way nobody can trace the hit back to you."

"Have you been watching _The_ _Godfather_?" Maia asked curiously. Sirius winked.

"How long d'you reckon Mum will be up there?" George said thoughtfully, glancing up at the ceiling.

"You've got at least until the meeting starts this afternoon," Sirius said, returning to his work. "What're we having for dinner tonight, Maia?"

"I've had that chicken marinating overnight," Maia said, thinking to what she had in the kitchen pantries and larder. "I thought I could do kebabs with flatbreads, some dip and coleslaw, potato-salad, and maybe fresh corn-on-the-cob."

"Mmm," was Sirius' only response.

"I'll show you upstairs," Maia said, indicating for the twins to follow her; using the fifth-floor staircase up to the attics—the only way to get up there without using Apparition—Maia showed the twins, Ginny and a curious Neville up to the attic, which was a series of storage-rooms filled with old furniture, antiques, portraits and treasures Kreacher was in the process of restoring, and several empty rooms at the front of the house, two of which were accessed by narrow wood French-doors, and which were interconnected by double-doors, and both of which had French-door windows which opened inwards, a curved rail jutting up to hip-height to prevent any despondent fifteen-year-old wizards from jumping.

Maia had seen these two rooms and been reminded both of _Peter_ _Pan_ and of _Little_ _Women_, and if she could have had Sirius sit at a typewriter with the walls papered with a manuscript, it could very well have been Christian's flat in Montmartre. Shabby, with a scarred and scuffed herringbone-parquet floor, a tiled fireplace in the corner of each room, they were cluttered only by old tables, trunks that needed sorting through, bookcases filled with novels and poetry Maia was sure none of Sirius' recent relatives would ever have purchased, as well as trinkets, and picture-frames and random stuff that needed sorting and putting in the appropriate storage-room; hearing from Bill that the twins loved to invent joke-items, and that they were coming to stay, Maia had wondered whether they could use the larger of the two connected rooms as their studio, due to the cupboards built in all along the right-hand wall, and they could all use the smaller room as a sort of secret retreat, a place away from the adults—mostly away from Mrs Weasley.

"I thought this could be your workshop," Maia said, opening the doors into the larger room, gesturing the twins inside. "We could set up sideboard-cabinets along the walls, there are a few old ones in the storage-rooms, and some big tables in the middle; you could have two desks over by the window, and those doors over there are all cupboards, so you could use them for storage, with a few Extending Charms to increase storage-space, and you could have a wrapping station to put together all of the orders. And I'm sure we could put some bookcases up along that far wall for shelving." She indicated the outer wall, with the windows.

"This is perfect," George grinned, turning in a circle as he danced down the room, peering out of the window.

"Decent light, lots of storage, plenty of room for us both to work without stepping on each other's toes," Fred said, examining the insides of the cupboards, which Maia had scrubbed and painted a clean white after Kreacher had used his magic to rid them of all infestations.

"Did you put this up?" George asked, indicating the left-hand wall, on which the narrow double-doors led into the little parlour-room. A length of corkboard, no fewer than ten feet long, had been attached to the wall about shoulder-height to Maia, a frame of ornately-carved and varnished wood attached to the wall leaving a five-inch gap. It looked rather smart.

"Yes, I did," Maia nodded. "I've been experimenting with decorating charms. I bought the corkboard in Diagon Alley; there's a shop that sells it at any length you need." She also had ideas to paint the next room, once she'd gone through everything in the trunks and bookcases. "I thought you could pin up some of your notes and diagrams up here." She shrugged. She knew she found her corkboards useful; she had had to buy a third corkboard because the second she had acquired to fill with her ideas, clothing-patterns, and fairytale illustrations, her diagrams and notes for the pocket-wireless, buttons for _Radio_ _Rock _and recipes, photographs and pamphlets, diagrams for Transfiguration, notes on Herbology, Professor Flitwick's essay-titles.

"This really is good of Mum to've brought us here," George said thoughtfully. "She'd never've let us come to Diagon Alley every day without demanding to know what we'd got up to."

"Happy to be your beard," Maia said, smiling, and the twins grinned. "I just can't wait to see any shop that can put Gambol & Jape's and Zonko's out of business. Have you found premises yet?"

"No, but we're on the look-out," Fred said. "Ideally we'd like somewhere in Diagon Alley, everyone who comes to Wizard London has to go through the Alley to get anywhere else."

Maia hadn't thought that, just as London had been the hub of the British Empire once upon a time, so too it must have been the centre of life for all of the Empire's witches and wizards who wanted to come to England, but there were parts of Diagon Alley and the other little streets in Wizard London that showed direct influence from the Empire's many diverse cultures; she loved most the perfume-markets, the spice-shops and pastries of the Moroccan shops, and the decisively French market that cropped up outside the boulingerie, the Chinese healing potions and the Roman baths, where a pretty Middle-Eastern lady gave mint tea to any witch who came to have a manicure or pedicure, and with whom Maia wanted to go and sit and have a chat one afternoon, to brush up on her Arabic, and have her nails done. Wizard London was as much a melting-pot of cultures as London, though Maia tended to think witches and wizards did a better job of blurring the cultural boundaries, because there was no issue with religion or anything like that. She wondered whether there was a letting-agency in Diagon Alley that could help the twins find premises.

"So have you two finished Hogwarts, then?" she asked curiously.

"Not yet," George said, at the same time Fred said, "We might be." They exchanged a look, then Fred said, "We're still working through a few things." Maia nodded.

"How long have you been working on your shop?" she asked.

"A few years," George shrugged. "And we've still got a good bit of work to do before we open up shop."

"Like what?"

"Market-research," Fred said. "We need to find out what exactly the average Hogwarts student requires from his joke-shop—"

"Or hers," Maia added, raising her eyebrow as she folded her arms over her chest.

"Or_ hers_, exactly," George nodded, giving his twin an enigmatic look that said a lot, but nothing Maia understood; she supposed this was an issue the brothers were still working out.

"Either way, we have to carefully evaluate the results of our research, and then produce the products that fit the demand," Fred continued. "Anyway, why d'you say _her_ joke-shop. You said earlier that most girls don't invest in frogspawn soap and biting teacups."

"Well, not so much joke-products, but there's a vacuum in the market for products aimed solely at teenaged girls," Maia said. "You're either a teeny tiny witchling like Opal, or…well, a mum."

"Are these ideas you've been having anything to do with this vacuum in the market?" George asked shrewdly, eyeing her closely.

"A few of them, yes," Maia shrugged.

"Walk with us to Diagon Alley, we'll have a chat," George said, flashing her a surprisingly charming smile.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review. This chapter is part one of two. The trip to Diagon Alley comes next, with Maia and the twins having some discussions about what they want to do with their creative genius!


	19. Chapter 19

**A.N.**: I realise this is one chapter shy of twenty, but I just wanted to write a note and say the big climactic event will occur at Christmastime, not June as usually happens in J.K.'s original works, and for that reason, I'm justifying my long exploration of Maia's summer at Grimmauld Place, and her first few months at Hogwarts!

Oh, and Dear Readers, after a week spent in Lincolnshire with family-friends, I come back educated in all things _Teen Wolf_, even going so far with the three girls I stayed with as to plot out a film with a cast of our most delicious actors, with nine different times Alison is viciously slaughtered in an accidental murder. And while I laughed my arse off at the physical transformation of the werewolves and the way they run, I have fallen in love with Isaac Lahey. You are all invited to our wedding. And please feel free to toddle over to the _Teen Wolf_ story I'm planning on writing, whenever I actually finish downloading the episodes so I can get things correct in my story!

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_19_

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><p>With the promise that they wouldn't venture into Knocturn Alley—Maia didn't know whether or not the twins were being sincere, and if Sirius sensed they weren't, he ignored his suspicions—Sirius sent them on their way: wanting to finish his homework before the summer got too far underway, Cedric remained at Grimmauld Place; and without Opal, it was a decidedly less-chatty outing to the Leaky Cauldron, though, in place of holding Opal's hand, she had to stop Neville from walking into the road several times because he had his nose stuck in a Herbology book.<p>

"So what are some of your ideas?" George prompted, as they walked along the sun-baked street.

"Well…lots of things, really," Maia sighed heavily. There were things she loved about the Wizarding world, and things she absolutely _hated_ and found utterly deplorable; some of the things that annoyed her were the backwardness of communications, and the lack of shops, clothes and cosmetics ranges for adolescent and young-adult witches.

"I've been making myself new dresses, and designing wintry clothes, out of fabric I got at Gladrag's. I'm not sure about the majority of teenaged witches, but Tonks and Ailith both told me they pretty much were dependent on their mothers for sending new clothes while they were at Hogwarts, if they grew out of their old stuff," Maia said. "Even though nearly every witch I've met has customised their clothes. I don't know, maybe I could do something with the dress-patterns…"

"Yeah, it's a bugger we can't get out of Hogwarts to access Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley during term-time," George sighed. Maia frowned behind her sunglasses, glancing at him.

"You never used the Marauder's Map to get to Hogsmeade?"

"Well, until this year, we didn't know how to Apparate," Fred spoke up.

"Yeah, couldn't get to Diagon Alley even when we wanted to," George sighed.

"But _now_," Fred grinned mischievously, and Maia grinned back.

"I was talking to Ailith the other day, when I met her outside Florean Fortescue's, I asked her what Hogwarts was like, _socially_, and she told me…well, she had me seriously reconsidering homeschooling in favour of being imprisoned at Hogwarts," Maia said, and the twins laughed. "Then Sirius mentioned this secret passage to Honeyduke's on the Map, and I thought…well, I can Apparate. If I can find the passage, what's to stop me using it, then Apparating wherever I want to go?"

The twins grinned delightedly.

"Maybe you could reform Hogwarts while Padfoot does his bit to reform the Ministry," George suggested, with an expressive twitch of his lips.

"Maybe," Maia said seriously. "I don't like the idea of segregating the four Houses, not even a common area everyone can socialise in. No parties, one trip to Hogsmeade per term, very few clubs…"

"What other ideas have you had?" George asked. "Bill mentioned to Ginny you're working on makeup."

"Oh, yeah," Maia said, nodding. "They're really just things that I'd wished I could've had while I was in the Muggle world, and now that I can use magic to try and create them, I thought why not give it a go? I went into Madam Primpernelle's when I was first exploring Diagon Alley, and you pretty much have to be over forty to appreciate their products. A lot of lavender-purple and patchouli. But I did pick up their pamphlet for cosmetics classes they offer. I thought it might help with the things I'd like to create."

"What have you been working on?" George asked curiously.

"Yeah, George has a bit of a knack for cosmetics—we're working on our own line of joke-cosmetics," Fred grinned, and Maia smiled.

"Well, they're not joke-products, just…you never remember to go and get your eyebrows waxed, and it's a pain, literally, to pluck them, so I thought of a double-ended little wand, with a spiral grooming brush on one end, and a sort of scented serum that dissolves hair painlessly…" Maia shrugged. She was still working on the serum, but she got more enthusiastic about the idea of it talking to Fred and George; they were inventors, they were going to have their own _shop_. Her playing around with makeup wasn't such a silly pastime to them, who probably dabbled a lot with different kinds of magic. She went on to further explain her ideas; "And I love wearing red lipstick, but it always leaves residue on your lips, sometimes it fades, so I'm working on a lipstick that stays in place, and is only removed, without leaving any trace, by a specific makeup-remover. I also want to do a cheek-tint, and an illuminating liquid, you know, to highlight the contours of your face. And then I thought of scented nail-polish, and in the Muggle world they've invented these things called 'nail wraps', they're solid strips of nail-lacquer you can just press on your nails, and they come in all different designs. Perhaps I could do a scented, flavoured lip-gloss," she added thoughtfully. Opal would love it. And special-effects!

"_Madam Primpernelle's_ offers classes?" George frowned thoughtfully, then glanced at his twin, who exchanged an enigmatic look with him. George turned back to her, with a subtle smile. "See, we've been toying with the idea of adding a range of products aimed specifically at the fairer sex," he said, tipping her a wink, flashing a smile, "but, well, we're not girls, so…"

"So you'd like a few nudges in the direction you should be taking with that line," Maia smiled.

"_Or_," Fred said, eyeing her shrewdly. "If you've already got ideas for an entire range of products, you could develop them, and we could supply our shop with your inventory."

"That's assuming you don't want to go into business yourself, open up your own shop," George said, glancing at Fred. "There could be some nastiness about profits and sales if we asked you to supply our shop, and we didn't give you what you're owed."

"Really, I only just started fiddling with these makeup ideas out of necessity—and wondering whether I could do it," Maia admitted. "I'd never thought about selling them to the wider public."

"You should think about it!" George said seriously. "Ginny used to love going through Mum's lipsticks and perfumes. And especially at Hogwarts, if something _new_ comes out, everyone sends off for it. Did you have any other ideas?"

"Well, maybe…a few," Maia said, shrugging. "I thought of a foundation with SPF—that's protection from UV rays, so you don't burn—and I've been reading through all the books I've gathered on potions, and I thought of incorporating a pore-minimising, spot-clearing potion into the foundation, with dittany to smooth and heal acne scars and even skin-tone. And Neville split his nail last week, when he whacked it on the edge of the table, so I thought of trying to make a nail-polish that _heals_. And perhaps buffs, too, so you don't have to faff around with files. Oh—and eyelashes are huge in the Muggle world, everyone wants great big fans of curly long lashes, and so I thought of making a mascara that really does increase the length and curl of your lashes.."

"Do you have any ideas how you'd package them, and advertise?" Fred asked curiously.

"Well, my favourite cosmetics company, _Benefit Cosmetics_, has really cool packaging designs, they're always inconsistent from each other, different fonts, styles, packaging, but they're young and colourful and flirty, but not at all cheap like some makeup companies tend to be," Maia said. "I like that concept, so I wouldn't make everything matchy-matchy like in Madam Primpernelle's. I'd make it _young_."

"What were you and Ailith talking about at breakfast?" George asked. "Something about a history-book, fairytales."

"Oh," Maia said, taking out her diary from her little bag, and opening some of the pages. "I'm working on sort of a children's interactive history-book, but weaving Muggle and Wizard timelines together, with a lot of stuff on Muggle culture. Padfoot is helping me with Wizard culture, like Quidditch and the first Triwizard Tournament… And for about two years I've been working on illustrating Muggle fairytales." She giggled to herself softly, and George raised an eyebrow inquisitively. "In one of the fairytales, _The Frog Prince_—or the Princess and the Frog—the prince is turned into a frog, only able to break the enchantment with the princess's kiss. I could market my version of _The Frog Prince_ with a complementary vial of potion to turn unwitting loved-ones into a frog."

The twins chuckled.

"Classic," Fred smiled.

"Anyway, Ailith put me in contact with a small printer that would publish the books for me," Maia sighed. "And I got another idea, from teaching Tonks and Bill how to cook—maybe I could even ask Padfoot about it. In the Muggle world, famous chefs put out recipe-cards in the supermarkets, to give you ideas on new recipes. Cooking-shows on the television are _huge_, and sometimes on the radio they'll bring someone on to do a specific recipe. But I thought _I_ could make recipe-cards, and sell them. Anyway… I've been knitting these little animals, and I thought perhaps if I sold them—they're really easy for me to make, as I'm such a fast knitter—I could donate some of the proceeds to S.P.E.W., Hermione says she's having trouble raising funds."

They paused at the zebra-crossing, the twins jumping on each other to press the button for the crossing-signal, and they waited. Maia glanced at the twins. "So what were your ideas? You mentioned your female-targeted range…"

"Well, we were thinking _love potions_," George said, and Fred nodded.

"Never underestimate the havoc a simple love-potion can wreak," he grinned.

"Oh, I won't," Maia smiled. "_A Midsummer Night's Dream_ is my favourite play." Neither of the boys had heard of it, so Maia spent a few minutes explaining the plot of the famous Shakespeare play. Unsurprisingly, they admired Puck, and Maia wondered whether it wasn't worth her while to see if there were any tickets left for _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ at the theatre, the twins would love the 'Rude Mechanicals' in the _Royal Shakespeare Company_'s production of the play. She wouldn't mind seeing it again.

Thinking about everything she was working on, somehow Maia's packed brain was able to dedicate some effort to think up some saucy, flirty names for different lipstick shades; to add an alarm-clock feature to her designs for the pocket-wireless; colour-change lipsticks and scented nail-polish; sets of self-cleaning, bio-conscious makeup brushes; anti-theft jewellery-boxes; self-cleaning brush-rolls; and password-protected little secret compartments in First Aid kits that contained stain-removing potions, breath-mints that calmed the nerves, a healing potion with dittany to prevent scarring, hangover cure potions…

She also thought about _jewellery_. She didn't wear much of it, she hated costume jewellery and sighed over _Alex_ _Monroe_ designs. But she thought, if she was to promote her makeup, and her dress-patterns, she could finish the job with jewellery. She envisioned tiny gold-dipped pendants stamped with letters; or tiny lightning-bolts; the Hogwarts House mascots; the customary heart, a dainty silver-winged Snitch; a tiny orchid or pansy; angel-wings; a little owl; a music-note; the infinity symbol; a feather. Thinking of a lovebird pendant, she smiled to herself, thinking, _A phoenix pendant_! She could even do a charm-bracelet to collect all the little pendants on, even watches with simple straps, but the watch-face decorated with a tiny dangling charm at the winder.

"If you don't mind, I have to stop and sit in the Leaky Cauldron; I have to write some of my ideas down. Inspiration's hit me with all the subtlety of a train," Maia said, and George chuckled.

"Why don't we meet up at Florean Fortescue's?" Neville suggested. "After everyone's got what they need."

"That sounds like a plan," Fred nodded. "George and I have items of a delicate nature to acquire."

"Do I want to know…?" Ron winced, looking as if he'd suddenly thought what his mother's reaction would be if she found out he'd let the twins go running amuck in wizard London, completely unfettered.

"Plausible deniability," Maia smirked, eyeing the twins' expressions. "Always the safest course of action. You wouldn't want Mrs Weasley to be out four sons over the purchasing of potions ingredients."

"That's alright, she'd have me, Bill and Charlie left," Ginny shrugged, flashing a grin.

"Save the firstborn and the only-daughter," Maia nodded.

"And have one spare," Ginny chuckled. "We keep Charlie in Romania and only bring him out on special-occasions."

"Best thing to do with relatives," Neville sighed, looking a little forlorn. If Neville's other relations were anything like his grandmother, she could see why Neville enjoyed being in Grimmauld Place so much, with Sirius, Cedric, occasionally Opal and now the Weasley clan. Maia chuckled, but she couldn't respond; she had only two relatives, now only one living. Her entire life, it had been her and Diane. Now it was her and Sirius, and they were nearly strangers. Strangers thrown into confined quarters, forced to bond over cleaning, copious amounts of food and a mutual love of literature and music, but less than a month ago, Maia hadn't known Sirius existed.

Both having given each other something to think about, George wandered off with Fred, conversing in low tones, and Maia drifted along beside Ginny, whom it occurred to Maia to ask about the shops she went to, the kinds of cosmetics she bought, whether she would invest what admittedly little pocket-money Mr Weasley could give his daughter on some of the products Maia was thinking up.

Neville wandered off to the Herbology emporium, intent on buying that book on Australian magical reef-life, while Ron meandered to the window of _Quality Quidditch Supplies_; the twins disappeared almost instantaneously, and Ginny expressed a wish to go to _Gladrag's_. Instead of staying in the dingy Leaky Cauldron, Maia found herself a little bistro chair outside a colourful café, and sat with a chilled Butterbeer, opening her diary, and jotted down her ideas, with quick preliminary sketches for packaging for a 'First Aid' kit and ideas for its contents; product-designs for lipstick tubes, and several names for lipsticks and nail-polishes; patterns for embroidery and beadwork to embellish tops and trousers of different fabrics; the details for a flat, rectangular zippered purse that could come in two sizes and different fabrics, leather, suede, the more expensive embellished; sketches for pendants with dimensions. A pocket-wireless with alarm-clock, available in polished wood, colourfully lacquered, or patterned with numerous choices of special-effects charms, hand-painted with a phoenix for _Radio Rock_, or a lion, a serpent, a badger or raven for Hogwarts students, maybe the four dragons the Champions had to face during the Triwizard Tournament; maybe she could even do the emblems for different Quidditch teams, with the lacquer in the same colour as the team's robes.

Adding a few last notes, cleaning her paint-brushes and leaving the empty Butterbeer bottle, Maia made her way through Diagon Alley: stopping by the printer, she picked up the freshly-printed postcards, which she dropped off at Mal's record-shop, tucking the badge designs into her wicker-basket, and, with a set list of things she needed to acquire, she went around Diagon Alley, picking up potions ingredients because hers were low, due to how quickly she and Sirius were going through her potions books; stopping by the stationery shop to inquire about sticky notes for Sirius; sourcing the supplier for wireless parts in the Wizarding-equipment shop so she could send inquiries; also stopping by the jeweller's on a whim to ask how much it would cost her for their jewellery-maker (a very kindly older wizard with a rather marvellous 'Granddad' moustache) to mass-produce gold-dipped pendants and supply her with delicate gold chains—she mentally added dyed linen as possible necklace choices, as well as leather cord—and she came away with the jeweller's assurance that if she wanted to, they could sit down for a full meeting about sourcing pearls, diamonds and where to go to see about designing the packaging. The jeweller, whose workshop was in the back of the shop-front, had even mentioned to her specific charms she could use on the jewellery to make it all hypo-allergenic, tarnish-resistant, and even adding some anti-theft spells.

In the tea shop—one wall dedicated to teapots and teacups of every kind in creation, the other two walls dedicated to shelves upon shelves of tins of every kind of tea imaginable, with several small two-person tables set for tastings—Maia acquired several of her favourite teas, trying a new one, Milky Oolong, coming away with Turkish apple-tea granules, black tea for Moroccan mint-tea, and some flowering Jasmine teas, Gunpowder Green, rose, Lapsang and something thoroughly magical, which tasted sweet but not sickeningly so, fragrant, warming like whisky, and which made her feel invigorated. She picked up some ingredients for dinner as well as baking-chocolate, and in the shop dedicated to kitchen supplies, she found the sweetest little eight-petal flower cutter, making her think inexplicably of Opal, who adored afternoon-teas and Maia's petit-fours.

Still thinking of Opal, Maia made her way to Gladrag's, wondering when the little were-girl's birthday was; Maia had sewn Opal several lovely little dresses, one of them quite smart to wear to Sunday-lunch at her grandparents', navy with hand-embroidery, and she had even sewn some dainty little ballet-flats. But with Opal's predilection for the Eleventh Doctor, Maia wondered whether a fun gift of a customised _fez_ for Opal might be appreciated.

In Gladrag's, Maia had, over the last few weeks, acquired a collection of faux pearls, tiny seed-beads in a rainbow of colours and a variety of special-effects, as well as other embellishments and trim, different kinds of sumptuous fabrics and delicate material for some new hand-embroidered hankies. Still thinking of Opal, who had shown a knack for fiddly tasks like knitting and sewing, she found some embroidery threads in vibrant colours, and picked out a selection of different beads. She could teach Opal how to make friendship-bracelets, to keep her entertained one evening while they watched a film, so she didn't fidget. She was pondering the bolts of faux dragon-hide—she particularly loved the sunflower-yellow and the cherry-red—when Ginny found her.

"Thought I recognised your dress," Ginny smiled. Maia was wearing one of the new sundresses she had sewn for herself, this one out of the pale olive-green fabric printed with different types of kites, the beribboned tails embroidered; she had detailed each of the kite-tails with tiny, colourful glass seed-beads. She had cut it sleeveless, and simple, with a wrap-over front held with three small iridescent fuchsia buttons at the waist. It was lined, the bodice lightly boned, with the sharp lapels folded open to show the raspberry-pink lining hand-embroidered with pale-green pairs of birds in flight. She wore her hair unadorned except for a pin keeping the curls out of her face, and a lick of her favourite red lipstick. "Fake dragon-hide?"

"For a purse," was all Maia said, still frowning at the material. She asked for a small length of the faux dragon-hide—in sunflower-yellow—to make a prototype with, as well as a length of brown faux leather, and she and Ginny had fun looking at all of the crazy, pretty fabrics with which she could line the clutch-purse.

It was at the plain burlaps and linens that Maia paused; she always used newspaper and muslin for her patterns, so this section of Gladrag's was well-known to her, but holding the cotton she was going to line the clutch-purses with, she suddenly thought of the eco-friendly linen tote bags that were so fashionable, rather than using plastic shopping-bags. She took a length of burlap, a sturdy fabric that would go with the summery feel of the sundresses she had made, and, knowing she had enough odds and ends of fabric at home to whip up a prototype, she left Gladrag's with a new crochet needle, with thoughts of Opal; _Fabergé_ eggs; fun bags of different shapes for kids; a fabric makeup-brush roll; tiny round gold pendants stamped with initials and beaded tutus rolling around her head.

It was with relief that she stopped at Florean Fortescue's for a small ice-cream, waiting with Ginny for the boys. Asking Maia why she had bought so much disparate stuff in Gladrag's got Ginny in on the creative process, Maia bringing out her diary, with Ginny gushing over the fact Maia had made the dress she wore, and eagerly anticipating the release of Maia's cosmetics-line; Ginny was going through the Gladrag's magazine, highlighting the fabrics and dressrobes styles she liked, while Maia painted all her new dress ideas for Opal, as well as the tote-bag, the brush-roll, the tiny pendants and a fun bag for Opal to put her things in, in the shape of a strawberry, with a long strap to loop over her head.

Fred and George appeared, laden down with packages tied up with brown paper and string, several bulging bags flashing gold and one corner damp with whatever they had purchased in the apothecary; they looked like they were having trouble moving, laden down with so many purchases, a great deal of them apparently quite heavy.

"Do you have a switch to turn your brain off or something?" Fred asked, eyeing Maia's watercolour set as she worked in her diary. She moved things out of the way so the twins could put down some of their bags.

"Does Snuffles sneak up on you at midnight and flip a switch, forcing you to hibernate?" George asked, grinning idly, as he set his bags on the ground under their table; Maia laughed softly, but she didn't stop working.

"I wish it was that easy," she smiled. "And in this, I blame George; you got me _thinking_."

"Dangerous," George smiled, helping himself to something from a bag he had acquired in the sweet-shop; Maia had visited that place so often now, she and Opal knew the inventory back to front.

"Exactly. I've got to thinking about making different things," Maia sighed, showing George her diary. Fred ambled back from inside the ice-cream parlour with two melting cones for himself and George, who helped himself to another sweet from the paper bag.

"D'you know, the sweet-shop offers classes, too," Maia said thoughtfully, glancing at the bag of sweets George offered Fred, and then her. George grunted softly, mouth full of sweets, and dived for one of the large bags under the table, retrieving a pamphlet.

"We saw that, too," George said, sipping some of Maia's Butterbeer.

"They're working on a sweet product for their shop," Ginny said, glancing up from her magazine.

"Not just one sweet," George said. "An entire _range_."

"Two, actually," Fred corrected, and George nodded eagerly.

"What kind of sweet product?" Maia asked curiously.

"Well, one range, we're working on producing Cognitive Caramels, Lusty Liquorice and Firebomb Bonbons," Fred said, and Maia laughed.

"Explain."

"Well, the Cognitive Caramels would give you a burst of extra concentration and clarity; the Lusty Liquorice are designed to, well, make the unwitting eater insatiably horny," Fred said, giving Maia a grin. "And the Firebomb Bonbons, we're developing to make you spit little balls of fire that explode—non-harmful, of course, but impressive."

"And the other line?"

"Skiving Snackboxes," George said proudly, grinning. "Range of sweets to make you ill. Not seriously ill, mind, just ill enough to get you out of a class when you feel like it. They're double-ended, colour-coded chews. If you eat the orange half of the Puking Pastille, you throw up. Moment you've been rushed out of the lesson for the hospital wing, you swallow the purple half—"

"—'which restores you to full fitness, enabling you to pursue the leisure activity of your own choice during an hour that would otherwise have been devoted to unprofitable boredom'."

"That's what we'll be putting in the adverts, anyway," George sighed.

"You couldn't have dreamed these up earlier?" Maia asked indignantly. "Two years, I had to sit through General Studies." She grimaced, and the twins laughed.

"Don't worry, we should have some of the Snackboxes finished by the time school starts up in September," Fred said. "You'll need them for History of Magic."

"I've heard," Maia nodded.

"But the sweets still need a bit of work. They taste horrible; we don't have Mum's culinary skills," George sighed.

"So you thought you'd take a course in sweet-making," Maia nodded approvingly.

"We had no idea the new and terrifying things we'd have to try to get this business going," Fred sighed, smiling idly as he turned his face to the sun.

"I was thinking of taking a few of the classes," Maia said. "I already learned pâtisserie, but sweet-making is very different. And since I have the time…"

George opened the pamphlet, motioning to borrow Maia's pen while he licked his fuchsia ice-cream, and they bent their heads over the pamphlet, ticking off which sweets they would like to learn how to make, out of the ones offered. When Ginny dashed off to the sweet shop, after Fred had graciously given her a few Knuts to spend there, George pulled out another pamphlet, this one for the classes _Madam Primpernelle's_ offered, and together, they went through the classes—some of which were evening classes, covering the span of three or four weeks, some of which were day-long courses—and ticked off which ones they liked the looks of. Maia glanced at the twins, and said quietly, "May I ask a delicate question?"

"Of course."

"Besides Harry, do you have any other investors?" she asked.

"None," Fred and George said together. Maia frowned. She had all that money in the de Lusignan vault, and, yes, her ideas for cosmetics and the pocket-wireless might cost her to start off with, but she was only really doing it for herself. The twins needed a financial backer. All Maia knew was that the contents of the de Lusignan vault was hers, and hers alone; there was nobody she could share it with.

"Would you consider allowing me to pay the enrolment fees for these classes?" Maia asked.

"Why would you do that?" Fred asked curiously. Maia shrugged.

"I recently came into a Gringott's vault, with nobody to share the contents with," she said quietly. "And paying for you to take these classes now will pay off in the long-run, for you. I can tell your mum that I forced you to take the classes with me, since I didn't want to go by myself." That wasn't true; she would have signed up for some of these classes regardless, but she got the sense that Mrs Weasley would stop at nothing to uncover the truth about her sons' activities if she suspected they were doing something they shouldn't be. Like inventing joke-products despite her forbidding them to sell their merchandise.

"That would be fantastic!" George exclaimed, after he and Fred exchanged a wide-eyed look of delighted incredulity.

"You'd lie to Mum for us?" Fred said, looking surprised. Maia shrugged.

"It's not _technically_ a lie," she said. "You can pout and pretend to be put out about having to go." The boys weighed their options, looking thoughtful.

"Alright," Fred said.

"But you have to let us pay you back," George said.

"I feel like we should write something down, to make it official," Maia said.

"We'll have to put it in our accounting ledgers," George said, glancing at his twin.

"What's the interest rate at Gringott's these days?"

"Don't worry about that," Maia said.

"That's bad business, Maia," Fred admonished playfully.

"Fine," Maia sighed, frowning. "Five percent, and you can pay me back for the classes over however long it takes."

"Alright," Fred nodded. Maia took back her pen from George, turned the page in her journal, tore another out from the end of the book, and neatly wrote out two informal, identical 'contracts' between her and the twins, with the total sum of the classes tallied up, the five-percent interest rate the boys insisted she add to the total, and the stipulation that the twins could pay her back in instalments for however long it took. She signed and dated both, and the twins did the same. George grinned, taking the second contract from her, tucking it neatly into his own workbook. Indicating the bags and parcels the boys had acquired, she asked, "So is all of this for your products?"

"Yep," Fred said, finishing off the last of his ice-cream, as George slid down in his chair, long legs spread out, hands clasped over his stomach as he raised his face to the sun. "We're having a bit of bother sourcing some of the ingredients we need…"

"Why the difficulty?" Maia asked.

"Well, because a few of them aren't exactly, er, well…legal," Fred said.

"It's nothing like dragon-eggs or anything—Charlie'd kill us if he thought we were butchering baby-dragons for our experiments, when some of the breeds are so rare," George said, peeking at Maia from under dark-auburn eyelashes. "It's just, a few of the ingredients we need are Class-C Non-Tradeable goods. Makes them hard to acquire, but they're well worth the effort of trying to track them down."

"You should try Dung," Maia said.

"I beg your pardon?" Fred's eyebrows rose indignantly. Maia smiled, laughing.

"Mundungus Fletcher. He's… Well, he's with _us_," she said, glancing around. "He's a crook, Padfoot says he knows people and hears things that other members can't. I'm sure he'd be able to at least track someone who knows someone who sells the things you're after." The twins gave her an identical grin.

"Knew I liked the look of you," George said casually.

"Now all we have to do is get all this stuff past Mum," Fred said, eyeing the bags and parcels.

"Hand them over," Maia said, bringing her wicker-basket up from the ground. Looking mildly incredulous, George handed her the first bag within reach; it disappeared into the wicker-basket, shortly followed by all the other bags, and the boys' collection of parcels and packages, boxes and wax-paper cones, and a few new cauldrons.

"Have you finished shopping?" George asked, glancing at Maia.

"Unless I hit another inspirational goldmine, yes," Maia said, yawning subtly. "Why?"

"We've still got a bunch of other stuff we need to buy," Fred said. "We were considering staying on late after the rest of you have gone home so we could get it all."

"This is your first trip to Diagon Alley since school ended, isn't it?" Maia asked; she assumed the twins, with the fortune in Triwizard Tournament winnings they had been given by Harry, would be stocking up on everything they hadn't had the money to pay for previously.

"It is."

"Have you been buying everything with cash?"

"Well, yes, but we've got ourselves a vault in Gringott's that Mum doesn't know about; we just deposited Harry's winnings," George said. "After we've got all this stuff today, we'll be doing everything by money-order."

"Smart," Maia nodded.

"And good for the accounts," George said.

"Do you need help buying up the rest of the things you need?" Maia asked.

"That would be good; then we might be back before Mum gets up from her sleep," Fred said, eyeing a pocket-watch with a frown.

"And we've got to stop by Gladrag's, remember," George said, glancing at Fred.

"Oh, right; Harry's stipulation," Fred nodded. He glanced at Maia, who had started; she had just remembered her promise to buy Harry some new clothes. "Reckon you could help us pick out some dress-robes for Ron?"

"Of course," Maia smiled.

Helping the twins pick out a set of dressrobes for Ron—rich midnight-blue, with not a frill or bit of lace in sight—and gathering new clothes for Harry, Maia then went on to help the twins pick up an order from the printer Maia used for her postcards and badges. They not only published books and printed pamphlets, but also printed the card boxes in different sizes and shapes (including pillow- and pyramid-boxes of different sizes) and labels for tins that the twins packaged some of their merchandise in. The company also printed the twins' order-forms, their invoices and business-cards.

They had to pick up an order from a company that made gable boxes of every size, in which the twins packaged their owl-deliveries, which were plain—discretion was key to delivering some of the _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ products—and which the twins wanted to stamp themselves with their company monogram; three W's, all interconnected, two above, one beneath, with a scattering of stars. George's design; the twins had gotten very good at drawing it, as they had been hand-writing the monogram on each of their owl-order deliveries. In the stationery shop, Maia helped pick out several spools of bakers' twine in acid-orange and neon-green, to bind the gable-boxes with, and the twins looked over what type of stamp they wanted; metal, wood or rubber, with a smart, turned handle or just a block of wood.

"Get a few of them," Maia advised.

"A few?"

"You'll most likely lose a few of them," Maia shrugged. "I'd get five or six, just to be safe." And acid forget-me-not ink was added to their basket, a large bell-shaped jar of it, blinding to look at; they bought two refillable ink-pads for it, and while the boys designed their official _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ stamps, Maia wandered the shelves, examining the beautiful papers, the stationery sets, the many inks and styluses, thinking of writing a reply to Hermione's last letter.

"I wouldn't have thought about losing these things," George frowned, looking inside the neat wooden box the stamps had been set in.

"My aunt would always make me buy three or four of the same-sized knitting needles," Maia said softly, feeling a pang. "She was always convinced half of them ended up as kindling for the fire when they disappeared." She examined the shelf of scented inks, smiling as she wondered whether she could put her favourite 'El Attarine' and 'Flowerbomb' perfumes into inks; there would be no need to sprits letters with perfume then the way Marty did in _Grease_!

Keeping her mind off Diane had proved easy, most of the time; she was so busy, and so consumed by her projects, that she didn't have time to grieve. She knew it wasn't perhaps healthy to put off mourning her aunt, but Diane had been ill almost Maia's entire life, and if she didn't like it, Diane's death had been inevitable. But Maia knew all of the things she was doing, her projects, wanting to improve the Wizarding society she was now a part of, would have made Diane incredibly proud. She would have liked that Maia was making friends, too. Her greatest worry had been that Maia would be left entirely alone. Part of her leaving Maia to Professor Dumbledore was due to her knowing that he would ensure she go to Hogwarts and meet people like her, so that she wouldn't be left to live in the Hobbit-hole, alone.

Having been left in Professor Dumbledore's care had been incredibly fortuitous for Maia. Not only was she pursuing the things she had long since wanted to accomplish—publishing her fairytales—but with the society she had been thrown into, she was also pursuing things that she would never have thought of doing if she had been left to go to university, to become a cryptographer or linguist. But she was _engaged_, pushing herself to utilise the skills Diane had raised her to have, using her education to create a history workbook, knitting little toys to sell for charity donations, becoming involved with werewolf rights, joining S.P.E.W., even her inventions tested her. She had so many talents and skills that Diane had ensured Maia had in her arsenal, yet until coming into the Wizarding community, she hadn't had call to use them beyond making her own clothes.

She had never thought of going into inventing, or politics; numbers and words had been her true love. She had always loved food, and cooking, but she would never have tested her creative abilities with either if she hadn't wanted to put together recipe-cards as an easy way to collect money for S.P.E.W., the same way she would never have put her sewing and knitting to good use, altering the second-hand robes that Remus had been distributing amongst his less fortunate contacts. She could say though that her life in the Muggle world had taught her the value of hard labour; doing everything by hand, the slow way; that detail made the garment; that nothing worth having ever came without effort.

Diane had given her everything Maia would need so that, when the time came, Maia wouldn't actually need her anymore. She had raised Maia, and in turn, Maia had taken care of Diane, but like James said in _Finding Neverland_, Maia could find Diane in every page of her imagination. She was there, tucked into every recipe, every tiny stitch, every painting, every design Maia dreamed up, each musical note she played, because it was Diane who had taught her how to do all of those things.

Maia was nearly sixteen. Her mother had died just after her second birthday, her father, sometime around her first; Diane hadn't lived to see her come of age. Get married. She would have no stories to tell her children about their grandparents; but she would preserve Diane's memory in the traditions she continued herself, and which she planned to teach her children.

She and Sirius could create a new tradition for the Black family, a new reputation for one of the oldest Wizarding families in Britain.

She wondered, pausing at a collection of letter-seals that featured lions, what Hogwarts house her mother had been in? When was her father's birthday? What subjects had they taken at school…? What had they wanted to be 'when they grew up'?

People had written biographies about Diane, the squib who was one of the most celebrated magical biographers and linguists of the age. But nobody had written a line about Balian de Lusignan, or Regulus Black. Maia had read the biographies of Diane; she had felt like she was reading about a complete stranger; the woman in the books wasn't the same Diane she knew. Even if people could tell her things about her parents, she knew she wouldn't be able to connect with them; her parents were strangers. Two people who had died during the War, on opposite sides, and who had written and illustrated her favourite bedtime story. But strangers. It was because of them that she was alive, but they were completely unknown to her.

"Are you alright?" a quiet, concerned voice asked, and Maia glanced up, unseeing. A haze of vibrant red came into view, and Maia blinked. She gave George her most charming smile, the one that deflected those sympathetic, worried looks she had gotten since her aunt died; it was the smile that said, 'I'm fine!' "What were you thinking about?"

She set the little dog seal on the shelf and sighed softly. "Death."

"Oh," George said quietly, and she didn't miss that he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. This was why she usually employed that smile, so she didn't have to endure this awkwardness. And also so they didn't, either. She sighed, glancing over at Fred, standing at the cash-register and watching the shop proprietor wrapping their boxed stamps in brown paper and string.

"Looks like you're ready to go," Maia said, smiling slightly. Leaving the shop, Maia pulled her sunglasses over her eyes, tossing her hair out of her face as the heat enveloped her. She hated grieving; it felt heavy, and it tired her out. They found Ginny outside the Magical Menagerie, laughing at Kneazle kittens gambolling around in a basket, one of their number basking in the sun while the others play-fought; Ron and Neville met them outside Florean Fortescue's, and with the last of their purchases made and tucked safely into Maia's basket, out of Mrs Weasley's reach, they made their way through the Leaky Cauldron, back into Muggle London.

They paused only so Maia could buy them all an "ice-cream with an arm sticking out", as Opal had described the _99-Flake_ ice-creams, at the Muggle ice-cream van they passed, and back in Grimmauld Square, Kreacher admitted them to Number Twelve; they could hear music playing in the library, as well as a lot of dull _thunks_, and, upon inquiry, Maia found Sirius going through another bookcase, frowning idly at the titles of books before tossing them into a large burlap sack, some of the books moaning and wailing softly as they hit the pile of other discards.

"Productive day?" Maia asked, quirking an eyebrow as she examined the state of the bookcase.

"Oh, very," Sirius said, shooting her an ironic grin. "Everything's ready for the early broadcast, Tonks is going to broadcast live from the Battle of the Bands tonight, and I've decided when Harry comes to stay, I'm going to interview him and Cedric about the Triwizard Tournament. The _real_ scoop, none of that drivel Skeeter made up."

"Harry _loves_ giving interview," Fred smirked ironically. "How are you going to convince him to let you interview him on-air?"

"I have my methods," Sirius said evasively.

"Speaking of him, I picked up some things from Gladrag's for him," Maia said. "When d'you want me to go to Privet Drive next?"

"Soon," Sirius yawned. "He'll probably have gone through your care-package already. Never underestimate the eating capacity of a teenaged boy. What'd you pick him up from Gladrag's?"

"Three pairs of jeans; ten t-shirts; five smarter button-down shirts; two pairs of smart trousers; a blazer; two jumpers; and a selection of the most lurid and colourful socks and underwear the twins could find," Maia smirked, thinking of the numerous pairs of socks and underwear the twins had been convinced Harry couldn't live without: some glowed in the dark; others had vivid-blue Billywigs on narrow pink and grey stripes; lightning-bolts that flashed, stormy clouds that actually rumbled like thunder; little navy owls on a pale-cocoa background that actually hooted softly, a pair of socks that had a parrot pattern and repeated to her whatever she said in a great cacophony; and a pair with tiny Snitches glistening and shining as they flitted about.

"You bought Harry new clothes?"

"He looked like a poster-child for _Oliver!_ auditions," Maia sighed, yawning softly, as Sirius chuckled. "I thought it might be nice for him to have something new for a change."

"You let Fred and George pick out Harry's clothes?" Ginny asked, wincing slightly.

"Excuse me, we have _exquisite_ taste," Fred exclaimed, while George pretended to look highly affronted.

"I picked out Harry's shirts and things," Maia assured Ginny. "Harry doesn't really scream pink-velvet waistcoats and peacock-silk blazers."

"You would have looked absolutely _dashing_ in that waistcoat, Fred," George said, and Fred preened, fluttering his eyelashes.

"Not nearly as _scrumptious_ as you in those purple velvet trousers," Fred said.

"Are they always like this?" Maia smirked, glancing at Ginny, who rolled her eyes, smiling. She glanced at Sirius. "Has Cedric finished his work yet?"

"He's still in the study," Sirius said, grimacing at a particular title before tossing the book over his shoulder.

"Probably writing a letter to his _girlfriend_," Maia smirked.

"Undoubtedly," Sirius grinned.

"Are you going to have the meeting in the dining-room tonight?" Maia asked. "It'd be easier for me to get the dinner ready early."

"Yes, we'll be in there, though I don't expect tonight's meeting will be very long," Sirius said.

"After that one on Wednesday, I don't think any other meeting-duration could compare," Maia said; the meeting had gone on for hours, she had had to send Kreacher in with dinner and drinks to make sure nobody was keeling over from hunger or thirst, and she and the boys had eaten in the kitchen, wondering what the Order could possibly be talking about for so long.

"We should have given you advance-warning about that," Sirius said, glancing at her.

"Next time, tell me, and I'll put a spread of sandwiches and drinks up on the sideboard for people to help themselves to, so Kreacher doesn't have to interrupt," Maia said, and Sirius nodded.

"Actually, it was good that you sent Kreacher in, he ended up being very helpful," Sirius said thoughtfully.

"With what?" Fred asked delicately; it couldn't be clearer from their expressions that not only Fred and George but Ron, Ginny and Neville were keen to hear anything they could about the Order's business.

"Oh, this and that," Sirius said, pale eyes twinkling with amusement as the twins visibly deflated with disappointment. "Maia, where did you put that letter-organiser, by the way?"

"It should still be in the studio," Maia frowned.

"It must be under some of the records," Sirius sighed to himself.

"Speaking of the studio," Maia said, setting her basket on the floor and sticking her arm into it, frowning as she rummaged around the contents, hastily drawing her hand out when she felt something moist and squidgy, using her wand to Summon the things she had bought in the stationery shop. "They're sticky notes, I notice you use scraps of parchment; these are a bit tidier, and won't fall off." In various shapes—a Snitch, a Billywig, a Quaffle—the sticky-notes were very fun, a pack of them scented, one pack colour-changing, and Sirius grinned idly as he looked them over. "And I got some of that scented ink you like."

"Thank you!" Sirius smiled. He glanced at the twins. "You'd better get your contraband items upstairs to your room before your mother comes downstairs; I thought I heard her moving about up there a few minutes ago."

"Right you are, Sirius!" Fred said, glancing into the hall to the gallery as George grimaced.

With so many other people in the house, Maia found that her time spent alone, bonding with Sirius, was depleting with every day; she didn't mind, because in the evenings they would still sit together, going through records, eating popcorn and playing _Scrabble_, and now they watched films, or television-show episodes, while they worked on other things. They had things to _do_; Sirius was as engaged in planning his broadcasts, putting together set-lists of music, doing research into bands, aspects of Muggle culture that tied in with specific subjects he wanted to talk about, and he was having _fun_. Arguing with Jack over the choice of music, decorating the studio with those illicit photographs his female fans had sent in this morning, revisiting his old journals for hilarious anecdotes he wanted to share with the Wizarding world to encourage others to send in similar stories, he was having so much fun, enthusiastic and highly intelligent, articulate with his views and persuasive; he had asked Maia to send owl-orders in for subscriptions to various Wizard magazines, as well as asking her to pick up Muggle magazines and newspapers, so he was well-informed on the day's news and culture. Without their knowing it, Sirius was becoming integrated with Wizard society after a long absence. And, because she was one of only two people in the entire house who knew anything about Muggle culture (the other was Ailith, who came by for meetings and dinner, and sometimes stayed later if she had work to do, or wanted to watch the film they had chosen for the evening) Maia was the go-to girl for Sirius for anything Muggle-related, so they still had a lot to talk about.

And Sirius was encouraging; anything Maia thought of, he encouraged her to pursue it, whether it be her photography, her recipes, her fairytales, knitting little animals, sewing new dresses and pondering a cosmetics range, getting involved with S.P.E.W. and even spending an afternoon discussing werewolf rights with Remus, Mr and Mrs Lovett, Jules Ruffio and Mr Diggory. He helped her refine which recipes she wanted to put on her recipe-cards, and during her magic lessons, he was continuously patient, enthusiastic and amusing, making learning exciting and incredibly fun, praising her when she mastered a spell, encouraging her when she had trouble, going so far as to temporarily set aside his dislike of Professor Snape to ask him to examine her finished potions and mark them to his standards, as well as give Maia essay-titles to work on throughout the summer.

Having no public-library adequate for Maia's needs as a student in Diagon Alley, Sirius had asked Professor Dumbledore to permit Maia use of the Hogwarts library over the summer. Forgetting that it was Professor Dumbledore who was her legal guardian until her seventeenth birthday, Maia had been surprised that Professor Dumbledore so willingly granted her access to the school's resources outside of term-time. She wondered where he lived when Hogwarts wasn't in session, and wondering what happened to the house-elves when the school was empty of students, Maia again thought of replying to Hermione's latest letter, wondering whether they shouldn't utilise the lull between terms to interview the Hogwarts house-elves.

Making their way upstairs, Neville wandered off to the den with his new book on Australian reef-life, and Ron, perhaps encouraged by Cedric's work-ethic, or the threat of Mrs Weasley's disapproval at putting off doing his homework, went off to the study, intent on getting some of his summer homework out of the way before Hermione and Harry arrived for the summer. Maia got the impression he was rather bored without his best-friends; that, despite sharing a dormitory at Hogwarts, and despite being brothers, Ron spent no time with Neville at school as friends, that the twins were best-friends with each other and Ron had his own friends, thus, they weren't especially close. Ginny wandered off after Neville, with her magazine, and, collecting the twelve-foot mirror from the sixth floor, Maia levitated it down to the fifth-storey doorway to the attic staircase. The twins, adept at complicated, experimental magic, had been working on password-protected items for their joke-shop, and so showed Maia how to enchant the mirror to swing open upon specific phrases being said, which they agreed should be changed once a week to prevent Mrs Weasley catching on. 'Off with their heads' was chosen as the first password, and they tested the mirror out several times before climbing upstairs.

Sitting on the well-worn floor of the twins' new workshop, Maia emptied out the contents of her wicker-basket, after having retrieved a few of her textbooks and books on decorating charms; they went through the contents of some of the storage-rooms, taking out three sideboards to set end-to-end under the corkboard, found several desks, a scrubbed table that must have once been in the kitchen, and conjured several bookcases; Maia found a Chinese apothecary cabinet with nearly a hundred little cubby-drawers, which Maia labelled neatly for the twins as they filled the drawers with potions ingredients they had picked up in the apothecary.

Working with the blank canvas that was the attic workshop, Maia helped the twins organise everything; the potions ingredients in the apothecary cabinet; the product packaging and equipment in the cupboards; the gable-boxes, brown paper, bakers' twine and ink, ink-pads and stamps onto shelves by a desk at which George placed their battered but functional letter-holder and the stack of fresh invoices; they put two desks back-to-back in front of the French windows, put an old brown-leather settee in one corner by the heating-stove, and set their cauldrons on the scrubbed table in the middle of the room, bringing out all their other equipment, things they stored in their trunks for safekeeping, and Maia organised all of their finished, boxed products in the bookcases so they were within easy reach.

Leaving the twins to their own devices, Maia went back downstairs to put the contents of her wicker-basket away in her bedroom, and, armed with her knitting, her sewing and her diary, she found Neville, Ron and Ginny in the den, listening to the beginning of Sirius' broadcast. While they listened to Sirius extol the virtues of Muggle cinema, and crow that the listeners of _Radio Rock_ would be hearing not only the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ but also the _Perfumed Gobstones_, the _(APL)_ _Anti-Pureblood League_ and the _Patchwork Snidget Complex_ perform _live_ at the _Brass Jobberknoll_ in the Battle of the Bands, and played _AC/DC_, _Led Zeppelin_, _The Puffskeins_ and _ABBA_ before announcing the competition Maia had suggested, to design a limited-edition t-shirt for _Radio_ _Rock_ listeners.

When Mrs Weasley emerged, having had a good nap and thus, ready to go on duty overnight, she sat in the den with them, wincing but dutifully listening to Sirius' broadcast because Ginny had asked her to, thinking she would like some of the female singers Sirius featured, and she sat with her crochet, while Maia finished a prototype knitted monkey, without its clothes as of yet, and finished working the _Radio Rock_ phoenix motif in embroidery and beadwork—embroidery-thread and beads from Gladrag's, so they sparkled and shone and pulsated with golden light, glittering and glowing—onto black velvet, which she was planning to turn into a clutch-purse like the others she was designing: she wanted to make a prototype for a tote-bag, a makeup-brush roll, a cushion-cover and a blanket, small flags and a banner, a case for Keepers' gloves and pencil-cases, using the _Radio Rock_ golden phoenix and some form of black fabric, whether leather, dragon-hide, velvet, silk or cotton, not always beaded but embroidered, in different sizes depending on the item, with the phoenix. Mrs Weasley was teaching her spells and charms to use with her sewing; she could charm a needle to embroider the same pattern over and over again, even charm the beads to loop themselves onto the needle, so once she had the prototypes done, she could think about mass-producing them.

Her embroidery finished, Maia held up the example to the window so Sirius could see from the studio, and he grinned, flashing her the thumbs-up, and they heard him interrupt _The Cure _to announce that "_I am thrilled to announce that, thanks to Niecey's untiring efforts and endless supply of inspiration, _Radio Rock_ merchandise will shortly become available for purchase, including but not limited to t-shirts, badges, tote-bags, pencil-cases and banners, so keep your eyes peeled for advertisements, and keep sending in your designs for the limited-edition _Radio Rock_ t-shirt_!"

"He does seem far more cheerful," Mrs Weasley remarked quietly, as Maia sat back down, grinning to herself, and picked up the muslin pattern she had sewn as a template for the larger clutch-purses, nearly twelve inches long, seven high—she had designed a little flat rectangular coin-purse, the medium-sized clutch-purse, and a larger model that folded over.

"He has something to _do_," Maia said, glancing over at her uncle through the window into the studio.

"You did a good thing, doing all of this for him," Mrs Weasley said, giving Maia an approving, affectionate look. "How are you two rubbing along? You only met a few weeks ago."

"We get on very well," Maia smiled, and they did. Discovering she had an uncle was still new; thinking of Sirius as said uncle was even more obscure, because she forgot, sometimes. He was her _friend_ more than anything else. "It's…strange, sometimes. He's the brother of the father I never knew." And he was the only family she had left in the world.

Sirius and Ginny both pouted later that evening: When the meeting had ended, dinner enjoyed and the dishes were being washed up by Kreacher, Ailith and Tonks, who had arrived with a change of clothes each, encouraged not only Maia but Neville, Cedric, Ron and the twins to get ready; having had dinner with the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ members who were also in the Order (Pip the drummer being the only one not involved in the Order, and this his last gig with the band) the others were excited to be invited to the _Brass Jobberknoll_ to watch the Battle of the Bands, especially when Jack mentioned he could get them all in for free.

But Mrs Weasley put her foot down, and wouldn't let Ginny go. Tonks having acquired a broadcasting microphone from Sirius so she could commentate the Battle of the Bands, Sirius pouted, grumpy that he couldn't attend because he was "babysitting", though he was careful not to say such around Ginny, who looked murderous.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review!


	20. Chapter 20

**A.N.**: I know it doesn't seem like there's a lot of 'plot' going on, because this isn't chock full of action, but I like to write stories so they're almost realistic, days passing, things building up, so even if it doesn't seem like Maia's ideas for fashion, makeup and her _Talon_ magazine are relevant, well, they are, and will be more so in the future. Especially _The_ _Talon_: All rebellious movements should have their own literature, and _The_ _Talon_ becomes synonymous with Dumbledore's Army. I have _plans_ for _The_ _Talon_—and for those films Sirius had in amongst his old possessions.

Any suggestions for when I should bring Draco Malfoy into the story. I've got plans for him, too. Does anyone know if J.K. published that interaction between Draco and Theodore Nott, which she planned to put in _Half-Blood Prince_? I'd love to see how Draco acts around people he thinks are equals.

Being as I only got _one_ review for chapter nineteen, I'm surprised I'm even uploading this treat for you all to read. Make me feel good about spending so much time writing this story for you and _review_, please.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_20_

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><p>"Okay, Fred, last flat, please say it looks familiar," Maia yawned tiredly, rubbing her face and pushing her sunglasses back up her nose.<p>

"Uh…" Fred stalked about the covered entryway to a neat little block of flats at the end of Diagon Alley, old Tudor homes that had been converted, and where they were sure he had disappeared to last night with a very pretty blue-haired witch of a not-inconsiderable bust-size.

"Apparently it doesn't look familiar," Maia yawned again. A long, incredible night at the _Brass Jobberknoll_, listening to four amazing bands playing live for a tumultuous, packed audience, had done wonders for the energy and atmosphere last night, but even the hangover-cure potion they had all had this morning at breakfast couldn't help with Fred and George's persistent enthusiasm. If Maia was tireless, they took it to the extreme, hyperactive and hilarious; she couldn't remember half of what they chatted about last night, but her stomach had hurt for laughing, and when she had wanted to get better photographs of the bands, George had lifted her onto his shoulders as if she weighed no more than Opal, letting her take as many pictures as she wanted, holding her thighs to stop her falling, before letting her down, giving her a fresh cider, and Fred had hexed the bassist from _(APL) Anti-Pureblood League_ for mouthing off about the fact that the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ had rightfully won the Battle of the Bands, with the _Perfumed Gobstones_ coming in second, and the _Patchwork Snidget Complex _landing the small cash-prize for third-place.

Fred had hexed the bassist, and gone home with his girlfriend, with whom the bassist had had an enormous row in front of everyone shortly before the first act, _Patchwork Snidget Complex_, had started playing.

"No, hold on! Hold _on_!" Fred blurted, glancing around, spinning, pausing, and his eyes widened as he grinned, stopping in front of the nearest door. "Here. This is where she lives." He glanced at Maia. "You knock."

"Why me?"

"Because her boyfriend might be there!" Fred said, as if she was prodigiously dim. "How would it look if her one-night-stand came by the morning after? He almost caught me last night. Why d'you think I forgot my jacket?"

"There are so many things wrong with that sentence," Maia said, as George giggled and leaned against the wall. Maia knocked on the door, as Fred hid out of sight, just in case the rather burly bassist was trying to mend fences with his girlfriend. With Fred's jacket and the girl's name, Maia wandered back into Diagon Alley; Fred and George examining the note the girl had slipped Fred in the pocket of his jacket.

Picking up a shoulder of lamb to slow-braise for the Sunday roast, the boys had decided to accompany Maia to Diagon Alley, so they could pick up a few more ingredients and equipment, and retrieve Fred's misplaced jacket.

"So I take it you don't have a girlfriend, Fred," she said, as they wandered back to the Leaky Cauldron; already staggeringly hot, she and George were sharing a two-scoop ice-cream from Florean Fortescue's. She didn't mind sharing; it was oddly sweet. And she had got to spend a long time with George last night, dancing to the music, enjoying a drink, talking, and laughing when the twins had shown off some of their products after the Battle of the Bands had ended. They had sold a bit, given out a load of owl-order pamphlets, and celebrated by piling into the local chippie for some fresh fish-and-chips and a Butterbeer. With Tonks, Ailith, Cedric, Neville, Ron and the _Frabjous_ _Chizpurfles_, they had commandeered a booth, and Maia had sat comfortably in George's lap, his strong arm banded around her to keep her from falling off. Fred had flirted with every pretty girl in sight, while George had spent the whole night talking to Maia.

"No," Fred said, tucking the note back into the pocket of his jacket.

"You went to the Yule Ball with Angelina, though," George said, glancing at his twin.

"Who did you go with?" Maia asked, glancing at George.

"No one," George shrugged. "I went stag."

"Ah, you played the field," Maia nodded understandingly.

"Why go with one girl, when you can make a half-dozen feel special asking them to dance?" George smirked playfully.

"So you were doing womankind a service," Maia smiled.

"I wouldn't be so quick to say that; you saw George dance last night," Fred smirked.

"And you're any better? You and Ange almost took out a half-dozen Durmstrangs," George bantered back.

"Do you two want to hand in our applications for those lessons?" Maia asked, gesturing to _Madam Primpernelle's_ before they could pass it. "I've got my money-order book. We can sort out the classes with the sweet-shop, too."

"That'd be good," Fred nodded.

"As soon as they're sorted, we can figure things out around our schedule," George said.

"You two can _keep_ a schedule?" Maia smirked, as they entered _Madam Primpernelle's_.

"Inventing takes up a _lot_ of time," George sighed.

"Yeah, if I don't write 'Take a nap' in his day-planner, he wouldn't sleep," Fred said, yawning, as he leaned against the counter.

"A good meal and some sunshine will cure that in no time," Maia said, glancing at George as he examined a display of little pots of eyeshadow. Glancing back at Fred, she blurted, "Fred, that's for your _feet_. Non-edible."

"It smells good," Fred frowned, setting the jar down on the display at the counter. "Where is everyone?"

"You'd think they'd be clamouring to give you a good seeing-to, with that face," George said, glancing at his identical-to-the-freckle twin with a grin.

"I wonder if they do any freckle-concealing potions," Fred said thoughtfully, turning to the other shelves. Maia sighed, smiled, and rang the little bell on the counter. While the boys examined the displays, and Maia got inspired by a charmed pedicure-kit, thinking of an edgier set of packaging and cosmetics for the kinds of girls who frequented the _Weeping Sunflower_ and _Brass Jobberknoll_, she pulled out her money-order book and when a saleswitch appeared, made out two money-orders, one for the twins' lessons, one for her own, with two invoices written out for the twins' lessons, so they could each keep a copy for their accounts, and Fred inquired about freckle-concealing and blemish-removing potions.

"We need to see how effective our potions are compared to other products on the market," George said in an undertone, as Maia showed him the differences between a shading brush, a smudger, a lip-brush and what a 'finishing' brush was. Wondering about a potion that dried nail-polish instantly, and the _Sally Hansen_ nail-wraps she had bought herself shortly before her exams, which she had yet to use, she wandered with the twins down to the sweet-shop, thankful she and George were still sharing their ice-cream so she didn't have to buy anything to sate the intense sugar-craving that always hit her when she entered the shop, and paid for the lessons she and the twins had signed up to take.

Remembering the folding deck-chairs she had found in the attic, she made a mental note to go through her collection of fabrics, and the twins took her to the Wizard glassworks, to look into having bottles made to their specific designs to package several of their products in. Having been to a glassworks once before, during a primary-school visit to the Isle of Wight, and another in the wizarding Moroccan perfume-market, Maia was fascinated by the way wizards used magic to manipulate the glass. They could even make it malleable, the wizarding equivalent of plastic, Maia supposed, and they could do _anything_ with it, different colours, special-effects, in any shape.

Maia liked best that she was learning magic as she needed it, not sequentially through approved textbooks; like Mrs Weasley teaching her charms for her needles, and cooking; cleaning spells; and Conjuring things like bookcases and even a dress-form. She wouldn't be going into glasswork as a career, but she enjoyed one of the workers showing her how they made little potions vials, the pieces for a French jewellery _casquette_, even an incredibly elegant glass teapot, the design of which she loved so much, she came away from the glassworks with her own, while the twins skipped with delight over their purchase, a box of fifty tiny squat apple-shaped bottles, with gold stoppers shaped like leaves.

"They're so teeny!" Maia smiled delightedly, examining one tiny bottle in the palm of her hand. "How much liquid can they hold?"

"Four millilitres," Fred said.

"That's not very much," Maia said, biting her lip. "I hope the product is worth the cost of the packaging."

"Oh, they definitely will be," George grinned mischievously.

"They're so cute," Maia smiled fondly.

"They're fairly sweet, yes," Fred agreed.

"What colour is the potion going to be?"

"As juicy a red as we can make it," George said.

"The apple of discord?" Maia asked, and George grinned.

"Excellent guess," he chuckled. "Do you like the Greeks?"

"I like their myths," Maia said. "Perseus, Aphrodite, the minotaur, _Helen_, Achilles…" She shrugged. "I like all the different stories, Persephone, Hyacinthus, Narcissus, Leto's twins and Hera's serpent… They'd make wonderful illustrations." She shot George a look, the look she had given him yesterday every time he'd caused her to have another _thought_ about something she'd like to sew or paint, and he chuckled. Offering the tiny bottle to George, he stowed it in its little nest of straw, and Maia asked, "Do I want to know what the joke is?"

"And take the fun out of the surprise?" Fred said, affronted, and Maia chuckled.

"I am an investor, you know, I am allowed to inquire about these types of things," she smiled. "Are they for love-potions?"

"Well, no," George said.

"See, who wants to admit they'd actually _need_ something like a love-potion—it'd be almost as embarrassing as, what, buying acne-treatments and dandruff shampoo," Fred said, "and since we're aiming our line at the Hogwarts-bound teenaged girl, we thought how we'd feel—"

"How _Ginny_ would feel," George interjected.

"Exactly, how a delicate, sensitive girl—" Maia shot George a smirk; from the sound of it, Ginny was _not_ a delicate swooning little daisy; she had terrorised everyone in Grimmauld Place last night for being left behind "—would feel if a delivery landed in the middle of the Great Hall at breakfast, the paper torn off from a bad flight, announcing to the whole school that she'd bought a love-potion," Fred continued. "We remembered how Ginny felt over that love-note she sent Harry during her first year, remember, George?"

"_His eyes are as green as fresh-pickled toads; his hair is as dark as a blackboard. I wish he were mine, he's really divine, the hero who conquered the Dark Lord_," George cooed, giggling, and Maia burst out laughing.

"You can understand, _we_ would find it utterly hilarious that some poor girl felt it necessary she use a love-potion to ensnare the boy she liked," Fred said, as George hiccoughed, wiping his eyes, his grin glittery in the sunshine, "but Ginny was utterly mortified."

"How long were you singing it back to her for?"

"We still do," George giggled, grinning, and Maia rolled her eyes, smiling.

"The point is, we thought, given that we're trying to do a service to our mischief-making brethren, we should take into account such delicate things as girls' feelings—"

"Disregarding last night, I presume?"

"—and we decided to conceal the love-potions in different bottles when we send them via owl-order," Fred continued, ignoring her.

"This would also work well getting them past Filch," George added. "The Hogwarts caretaker; he'd confiscate anything we can dream up."

"Yep, we've had a love-hate relationship with Filch ever since our first week at Hogwarts," Fred sighed reminiscently.

"Strange to think it'll soon be coming to an end," George said softly.

"What's old Filch going to do without us keeping him spry?" Fred wondered.

"I'm sure he'll survive," Maia smirked. They wandered back through the Leaky Cauldron, back to Grimmauld Place. Mrs Weasley was so tired from her overnight duties for the Order that she had gone straight to bed after breakfast, so the boys were free to examine their purchases in the den (Maia's Sneakoscope out on the coffee-table to alert to Mrs Weasley's presence just in case) and George asked to use Maia's watercolours—he wanted to do some drawings in one of his and Fred's many workbooks, so Maia brought out a collection of double-lined glass teacups without handles, chipped mugs and jam-jars to rinse brushes in, and an artist's clipboard, her masking-tape to secure the watercolour paper into place, some palettes and her collection of brushes.

She had noticed that, despite having incredibly little personal income, Mr and Mrs Weasley didn't seem to let their children go without anything they _needed_; and with their pocket-money, the Weasley children learned to save to buy what they wanted. So Maia wondered just how long the twins had been saving their money to start investing in their vision of a joke-shop of their own, and she wondered just how thrilled they were over Harry having given them his Triwizard Tournament winnings.

Feeling the effects of the previous night, still tired but miraculously without hangovers thanks to the little cobalt bottle in the kitchen, the rest of the teenagers in the house confined themselves to the den, or to their bedrooms, with the curtains nearly all the way shut to dim the room and prevent too much heat getting in and making it uncomfortable to nap. But Maia liked it in the den, with Fred going through Maia's DVD collection, infatuated with the discs, and the television; because Maia had mentioned that size did not necessitate power, with regards to some of the boys' products, using the One Ring as an example, the _Fellowship of the Ring_ was put on for the second time in Grimmauld Place.

"I _do _love his waistcoat," George said, sitting up a little straighter as he watched Bilbo pour tea for Gandalf in the little hobbit-hole kitchen, the vibrant red waistcoat Bilbo wore.

"Wait until we watch the new _Alice in Wonderland_; you'll love the Hatter," Maia smiled. She was reminded inexplicably of the twins last night, letting off a _Dr Filibuster_ 'Wet-Start, No-Heat Firework' display when the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ had been announced winners of the Battle of the Bands, when Merry and Pippin let off Gandalf's finale dragon firework. George set his brush down for a moment to watch the scene, and Fred sat up a little straighter, eyes on the television-screen (Sirius had helped Maia enlarge the television so it measured nearly seventy inches, with exquisite picture-quality, and Sirius was working on connecting the speakers to the television through magic, so they could have even better sound).

"I never knew what Dad was going on about," George said thoughtfully, slumped on the sofa beside Maia, who was working, not on her fairytales, but on several concepts for Eris, the goddess of strife, with details of a shining golden Apple of Discord etched with '_To the Fairest_'.

"About what?"

"Muggles," George said, watching the film carefully. "This is all costume-makeup, isn't it?"

"And computer graphics," Maia said, nodding. "Some of the things later on in the film, they're wonderful. Dwarrodelf, and the Balrog; Lothlorien."

"How do they come up with these things?" Fred wondered.

"_The Lord of the Rings_? It was a novel, originally," Maia said. "Sirius should have a copy somewhere, or if not, I've got one. The best part is, it's all completely fantasy; you don't have to know anything about Muggles to enjoy it." Fred went back to the film; Ginny, working on Charms homework, was lying across one sofa, alternating between watching the film and scribbling an essay, and Ron was snoring softly in an armchair in the sun.

"What are you working on?" George asked quietly, head leaning against the back of the sofa as he yawned, blinking drowsily. Maia showed him her journal—two pages dedicated to different incarnations of Eris's physical appearance, the golden apple, the different costumes she could wear, variations of the Greek chiton—and the subject of the large painting she had taped to the second of her artist's clipboards; sitting in a burning sunset was Eris, sprawled on a crumbling balustrade, one knee bent, with the shining golden sole of her sandal visible, golden straps twisting up to her knee, the other leg dangling down, the laces untied, one triple-strap shoulder of her flowing but short dress falling, her abundant curling crimson hair unruly, braided and twisted, glittering with tiny beads, inspired by both Regin, from one of her favourite erotic novels _Dreams of a Dark Warrior_, and Gawain from _King_ _Arthur_, a contrastingly delicate golden laurel glinting amongst her locks; she was glancing at the viewer, dangling a delicious golden apple by the stalk in front of her, smirking saucily. Maia was working on the background beneath the fuchsia, purple and orange sunset, a hazy landscape of the Siege of Troy as it began to burn, the wooden horse tiny and hazy in the heat of the sunset.

"I thought it appropriate the goddess of stride and discord should have vibrantly red hair," she said softly, smiling at George, who grinned easily as he examined the painting, and the preliminary character profiles in her diary. George got a quiet, thoughtful look to him, continually going back to the full painting Maia was working on. "What's the matter?"

"Fred, come and have a look at this," George called.

"I'm watching the film."

"_Fred_."

"You can pause it," Maia said, yawning, and she reached for the remote, pressing the Pause button, which enthralled Fred, and made her smile; she had paused it right when the camera shot to Strider sitting in the corner of the _Prancing Pony_, his pipe illuminating his eyes. One of Maia's _favourite_ shots. Fred made his way over on his knees, pausing by the side of the sofa to peer over George's shoulder at Maia's painting. After raising his eyebrows and smiling, Fred frowned.

"Our apples aren't gold. They're red."

"Good to know the inventor knows his products," Maia said, chuckling tiredly as she yawned, stretching luxuriously, putting her feet up on the coffee-table to stop Crookshanks curling up on them (with all that fur, he was very hot to have lying on one's feet) and reaching for the iced Pimm's she had poured for herself from the large pitcher of it on the tray Kreacher had brought up, filled with sweet things Maia had made earlier, things they had bought at the sweet-shop and some sandwiches to keep them going before dinner, due to their new habit of eating later, when the sun was starting to set, so it wasn't so hot.

"But I get where you're going with this…" Fred murmured to George, who was still gazing at the painting of Eris. "Gorgeous girl, the painting alone would draw our target clientele in…"

George glanced over at Maia, thoughtful. "Could you make her move?" Maia sat up a little straighter.

"Well, I could make a copy and try it," she said, licking her lips. She was still working on the magic required to make the subjects of paintings move. "And I could paint the apple red."

"What's the background?"

"It's the Siege of Troy," Maia said, and suddenly she got the idea to paint the Judgement of Paris—the _cause _of the mythical twelve-year war. "I'm still learning how to charm paintings to become animate. I could probably make her take a bite out of the apple and wink…maybe swing her leg, make a breeze play with her hair…" Her voice drifted off, thoughtful and dreamy, because more and more, she found herself visualising her paintings as snapshots in a moving scene, so she could more easily animate them the way she wanted.

"See, we're still working on the packaging for the apple-bottles we showed you earlier," Fred said, glancing at Maia.

"It would look good in your catalogue, the bottles superimposed over this painting," Maia said thoughtfully, remembering the dainty little apple bottles.

"I _like _this painting," George said, canting his head to the side, examining the painting. Glancing at her, he gave her an almost _shy _smile. "Would you let me have a copy to pin up on my wall?"

"'Course," Maia smiled, always gratified and delighted when someone appreciated her artwork. "Do you have any others?"

"Paintings?" Maia asked, hiding a yawn. The sun was making her tired. "Tonnes." She dashed up to her room, returning to the den with a collection of copied illustrations for her fairytales, and her diaries, in which she always painted initial studies and concepts for her characters. The twins had looked to be in serious discussion as she returned, and they were nodding.

"Could we…" George began, then glanced at his twin, whose eyes had widened, and he was nodding fervently while George's voice trailed off.

"Yeah!" Fred said.

"What?" Maia asked curiously.

"Could we _commission_ artwork?" Fred asked her, gazing at her earnestly. "We'd pay you properly for it, and we'd write up a contract asking permission to use your artwork, of course."

"But you're probably—she's got enough on her plate," George said, glancing at his twin. Maia sat up a little straighter, licking her lips. They wanted to _commission_ her to do artwork for them? She'd never been asked to paint anything for anybody before; a friend had a DeviantART account, and was convinced Maia should sell some of her artwork as prints on the site, but she didn't have access to the internet or a scanner, and she didn't like digital stuff anyway.

"Well, it…depends what you'd be asking for, really," she said carefully. George might be right; she _did_ have enough on her plate already. And this was their _business_. If they were willing to let her design artwork that they wanted to put in their shop, their _dream_, she could make the time.

"What d'you reckon…?" George said, glancing at Fred. "I think just…" He paused, frowning, glancing at his twin again.

"Yeah, definitely," Fred nodded.

"And maybe…" George trailed off; the twins didn't seem to need to communicate verbally; they knew each other so well, were like extensions of themselves, that every thought seemed shared. Every sentence was finished by the other, they grinned at the same exact moment, pretended to be each other, but Maia had noticed that George was the quieter of the two, if there was a _quiet_ Weasley twin! "D'you think?"

"Yep," Fred nodded, frowning thoughtfully.

"Different artwork for each one," George said. "A dozen different paintings; they can be incorporated into the packaging… But that's asking Mai to configure her paintings into the packaging, that's extra work." Maia suddenly felt that she was no longer part of the conversation; the twins had turned to each other, both frowning thoughtfully but their eyes bright with inspiration.

She liked the way George had called her 'Mai'.

"Work we'd be paying her for," Fred pointed out, and Maia sat on the sofa, feet propped up, sipping her Pimms, snacking on sweet baklava and leftover chicken-avocado flatbread wraps from last night; surrounded by clutter accumulated in the last few days with over a half-dozen teenagers and Sirius rooting through the bookcases and cupboards, listening to the film (Ginny had found the 'Play' button and was watching the Ringwraiths destroy the dummy-Hobbits) in the background, sun streaming in through the windows, the sound of Ron's soft snores as he dozed, it was unbelievably tranquil, comfortable; Maia watched the twins, pausing in her painting, just enjoying the moment. "…and it'd at least be featured prominently once we open up shop, we'd need the artwork for the displays."

"True," George agreed, and he glanced back at Maia; she sat up, raising her eyebrows inquisitively. "Can we have a think and get back to you?"

"Of course," she chuckled.

"D'you mind if I go through these?" George asked, indicating her diaries, and the stack of copies of her A3 watercolour paintings, as Fred made his way back over to where he'd been sitting in front of the television.

"I don't mind," Maia said. She had already been practicing her charms to magically conceal things from prying eyes; her most personal thoughts had been magically 'blanked' from the pages, only she was able to read the contents.

"Why did you paint this?" George asked curiously, indicating Eris.

"I don't know," Maia shrugged idly, sighing. "Our discussion earlier."

"What were you doing earlier, by the way, yesterday, I mean?" George asked.

"When?"

"When Fred and I were in the workshop, you were rummaging around in the other rooms," George said.

"Oh… I thought about turning the room next to your workshop into a…a sitting-room, for just us," Maia said, shrugging. "Sirius says I should start my own newspaper, even if it is all nonsense, and only for us."

"I could contribute a comic-strip," George said, giving her a lazy smile as he leaned his head back against the back of the sofa. Maia chuckled.

"Yeah, and I could write down and illustrate the stories Opal's been having me make up to keep her entertained," she chuckled again. "She'd love that, to see her make-believe adventures in writing, with pictures. So far we've helped the Doctor invent _Jammy_ _Dodgers_; met the Hatter with Alice; become the only Hobbit-girl and lady-dwarf to join Bilbo on his journey to the Lonely Mountain; had cakes with Marie-Antoinette and pillaged our way along the Spanish Main." George quirked an eyebrow.

"A doctor invented _Jammy Dodgers_? Aren't they Muggle biscuits? I've seen them in the Post Office in Ottery St Catchpole."

"No, _The _Doctor. Doctor Who."

"Doctor who?"

"Yes, exactly," Maia laughed softly. "It's a Muggle television-show that started in the Sixties, I think; they brought out a new series in the last ten years, and I'm infatuated with the newest regeneration of the Doctor. So is Opal. She loves going on adventures with the Doctor, Amy and Rory the Roman!" She chuckled to herself, smiling, over the numerous adventures she and Opal had had without ever leaving the playroom; she had committed quite a few of them to watercolour, turning Opal's imagination into something tangible they could look back on in twenty years and say, 'We had fun, didn't we?'

She sighed. She knew how Opal felt, not having a mother, but she'd be damned if nobody made a record of the little girl Opal was, how sweet and imaginative, precocious and charming she could be, the sound of her ridiculously enchanting giggle, the way she curled up, tucked right up against Maia's side, or in Sirius' lap, when they watched _Disney_ films or _Doctor Who_, sucking her thumb.

The idea that had sprung from her nearly-completed painting of Eris overseeing the Siege of Troy captured her imagination, and Maia dawdled back upstairs to her bedroom, which was cool and dark with the blinds drawn. Her projects dominated the room, different sections of it given over to embroidery, a dress-form, stacks of books, the walls pinned with notes, pieces of parchment, paintings, newspaper-cuttings, postcards and photographs, a few Doctor Who posters, vinyl sleeves. She found her paints and more A3 watercolour paper, and back in the den, George gave her half the glasses he was using to rinse his brushes, and while she painted, George continued to go through her fairytale illustrations.

Finishing Eris, she left the painting to dry as George examined a magnificent landscape A1-sized painting of the twelve sisters from different mothers, some of them typically European, some of them exotically mixed-race, all of them uniquely beautiful, from her retelling of the _Twelve Dancing Princesses_ strolling through a grove of diamond trees, bedecked in the finest dresses Maia could dream up with her partial-theme of _Kingdom of Heaven_, _Marie Antoinette _and Prince Albert's glass Great Exhibition, with magnificent head-ware in variations of turbans, tiaras, sparkling chiffon headbands, hair-jewellery, headdresses inspired by Arwen, Anne Boleyn, Marie-Antoinette, the Queen's jewellery; sumptuous colours to their unique dresses, special effects in the glitter of the diamonds both of the trees and of the girls' jewels and beaded embroidery; and another painting of the princesses being rowed across the glittering water by their enchanted suitors, toward a shining palace; _Tangled_, and the scene with the lanterns, had inspired the glittering candles strung up between golden poles, illuminating the sisters. Her heart aching again, Maia examined the details of these two paintings; she had modelled four of the princesses after her mother Balian and her three sisters' appearances, from a favourite formal photograph Maia had of them all. She had used her uncle Bertie's appearance for one of the princes.

She didn't know why suddenly she was in this heartsick mood. She didn't like the propensity to start crying, was annoyed and upset that she was allowing herself to _get_ upset. She finished a Butterbeer, had something sweet, and while George continued going through her paintings, Fred and Ginny watching _The Fellowship of the Ring_, Ron dozing, she painted in her diary.

She threw out the preconceptions of the Greek goddesses having particular physical characteristics. Like a wheat-blonde Beauty, a Malayan Cinderella, giving Hansel and Gretel a Native-American mother, or an Asian Snow White, or her multicultural Twelve Dancing Princesses, she turned traditional fairytale characters on their heads.

She loved doing studies and concepts for her artwork, and had a lot of fun with the Greek goddesses—she did portraits of their faces, and different designs for their costumes, hairstyles and eye-colour, their 'accessories', and loved a particularly flirtatious painting she did of Aphrodite, dressed in nothing but her lustrous hair and a string of pearls, a little dove peeking from her shoulder. She wore a wreath of champagne-coloured myrtle leaves, in place of a tiara or hair-bombs. She liked a coral, rose-gold, powder-blue, champagne, jade and light-grey colour-palette for Aphrodite, but instead of making her blonde as was the custom, she painted the long, shining locks of the goddess of beauty a pale cocoa-caramel, tousled and almost 'surfer-girl' beach-hair. Her skin was softly tanned but radiant, her lips a natural coral-pink, and, born of the surf, Maia had painted Aphrodite with luminous grey eyes like the sea after a storm. She smiled to herself, painting a full portrait of Aphrodite emerging from the surf, dolphins' fins in the distance, while the nude goddess bent at the waist, smiling curiously at the pearly surf at her feet, in which green-turtles of varying sizes were climbing over her toes, gazing up at her. Maia loved green turtles.

While that painting dried, she did concepts for the Garden of the Hesperides, Hera's fiercely-guarded orchard of golden apples, then turned back to her diary, painting more studies for concepts of Athena and for Hera. Instead of making Athena brunette, Maia painted her, shoulders back, chin raised, with long, rich auburn hair curling voluptuously down her back, threaded with berserker braids, wearing a bronze helm, holding a flashing spear. She was violet-eyed, with light cinnamon skin, and in her other hand she held a white chess queen. The colour-palette Maia had given Athena for her wardrobe and accessories was pea-green, bronze, chestnut and poppy-pink.

Maia had thought of an ebony-skinned Hera, but a study with rich copper skin, wearing a golden crown, her long, glinting cinnamon hair shining with gold combs, lent itself to Maia's chosen colour-palette of fuchsia, peacock-blue, gold, mango and lilac. Hera was incredibly regal, in full robes of iridescent silk, jewels and gold glittering, her vivid olive eyes glowing in her copper face.

Her paintings kept her focused, drew her out of a funk before she could get ensnared in missing Diane.

* * *

><p>She was quiet when she visited Harry in Privet Drive. A feast made by Maia, still developing her recipes, had been boxed, and the gift of a few new outfits had Harry very happy, almost enough to overlook that he was still stuck in his aunt and uncle's house, eavesdropping on the news by lying under the living-room window.<p>

Taking a bite out of her apple, Maia sighed and looked over the cricket-field, thoughtful. She didn't like the bouts of depression and retrospection that had plagued her the last few days; more so than in the immediate aftermath of Diane's death, she found herself mourning the loss of her oldest friend and companion. Because she had died leaving Maia's knowledge of certain things incomplete. For whatever reason she had felt made it necessary, Diane hadn't told her about her family, her parents, what had happened to them. All she had was dozens of photograph-albums and a few anecdotes written down by her mother about her aunts' personalities and the hijinks her playful uncle got up to, and a collection of exquisite, priceless jewelled eggs that had been gifted to her grandmother by her grandfather Godfrey. She had 'Bedtime for Baby Star', which had been illustrated by Regulus.

Like Harry, she had no idea who her family was, what they had been like, whether she would have loved them, laughed at their jokes and enjoyed holidays with them, anticipated Christmas and thrilled over the idea of the haul of birthday-presents she might have received.

"You're very quiet," Harry said, glancing at her. Maia sighed, chewing idly.

"Headquarters has turned into something a little like a monkey-cage," she said, resting her head back and closing her eyes. She enjoyed it; with the twins around, she didn't stop laughing!

She was absolutely entranced by the twins. Especially George, whom she found it easier to talk to, and they had struck up a very comfortable friendship, both of them artistic, inventive, and due to close quarters and little parental supervision, relations between everyone at Grimmauld Place had heightened exceptionally quickly.

But things could get quite anarchic when Sirius was playing his records in the studio, the twins were setting off _Dr Filibuster_ fireworks and Crookshanks was leaping onto the _Monopoly_ board, upsetting Opal, who needed constant entertaining with everything from yo-yos to playing make-believe with the trunks of costumes Maia had found in the attic, to cutting little biscuits with the eight-petal flower cutter Maia had bought in Diagon Alley and decorating them, to sitting with her knitting, a pair of headphones on, Spike the Puffskein in her lap. Ron frequently argued with Ginny over who got to pick a film, while the twins and Sirius both ganged up against Cedric, teasing him about sending so many letters to his girlfriend, and Mrs Weasley seemed somehow to make every situation more tense and less fun, Sirius her constant foil, because he liked the anarchism, and enjoyed having so many people around.

But Maia found herself lonelier now than she had when it had been just her, Sirius and Remus at headquarters. Nobody her age there, she had then at least had close proximity with her _uncle_; they had been getting to know each other. And, yes, she had set up _Radio Rock_ to give Sirius something to do, the knowledge that he was doing something to help the Order, doing his part without anybody knowing it was him doing it, but his broadcasts cut out a significant amount of time that they would usually have spent together. When one of her quiet, introspective moods hit her, she would retreat up to her room with her paints, and her sewing, sometimes, when she recognised that Maia was sad, with Opal, who would curl up on Maia's bed with Spike, and doze while Maia worked. Opal liked to cuddle when Maia had a nap every afternoon; Maia loved it too, unused to such close proximity with anyone.

The twins, too, seemed to enjoy spending time with her. When they weren't exploding things up in the attic, they burst into Maia's room when she was least expecting them, and their presence seemed to bolster anybody's mood, filling a room with their excitement, with sunshine and fun.

"Are the twins doing their best to make themselves at home?" Harry asked. Maia smiled for a second; the twins! Their enthusiasm contagious, Maia had worked out how to tell the difference between Fred and George early; Fred was more inclined to be quite vengeful, willing to do things that perhaps George wouldn't because they crossed certain boundaries. But neither of them had the particularly unkind knack that she had noticed Ron possessed, of sometimes making jokes at the expense of someone else. They teased, oh, did they tease! They teased _everyone_, but it was never personal, the way Ron's jokes sometimes touched a nerve; the twins could make people laugh over an orange-peel, their wit and charisma was so great.

But when they were alone—when it was later in the evening and Mrs Weasley had forced Ginny up to her room (the very pretty bedroom Maia had put together for Ginny and Hermione to share, with the nicest of the en-suite bathrooms, and two gorgeous Victorian satinwood dressing-tables), and Neville had retreated up to his room to tend his plants and Cedric holed up with him to write a letter to Cho in privacy—the twins would go up to their workshop until late, and, if she couldn't sleep, which had become the case sometimes when she got into one of her depressed moods, she would go upstairs too.

Sometimes she would go through the contents of the storage-rooms, left to her own devices with a tin of paint, a squashy red-trimmed sofa, tassels and old bolts of fabric she had found in storage, the trunk of antique hats, her watercolour paintings, the turquoise piano, a pot of tea and one of the folding deck-chairs she had refinished with new fabric seats, and Diane's very old brass telescope.

George seemed the most attuned to other people's emotions; and he seemed to guess when Maia really didn't want to sit alone doing her Astronomy homework at midnight, and brought her armchair up from her bedroom into the workshop, with her diamond-weave basket full of her current projects. George had invested in a set of watercolour paints from the apothecary, and Maia had helped him choose a set of high-quality brushes with which he painted designs for his and Fred's products, but with her armchair sometimes moved into the studio, use of the paints was given over to Maia several evenings, and, seeming to have an antenna that picked up someone who needed cheering up, the twins would keep her smiling, if not always without tears, showing her demonstrations of their products.

Sometimes she could barely hold her brush for laughing, let alone paint some of the artwork the twins had commissioned her to create for their line of love-potions, daydream charms and joke-cosmetics, and of all the new residents in Grimmauld Place, she enjoyed the twins the most.

The twins had made themselves at home in Grimmauld Place, yes—she didn't think it possible that a family of six, two of whom were as enigmatic as Fred and George, could _not_ make any place in which they lived their own—but having the Weasleys in Grimmauld Place had brought a _family_ to Maia, and Sirius, and Remus.

Maia had never had a family; she had had Diane, who had raised her the way she knew how, but Maia had never had cousins, or siblings; she hadn't grown up flying about the Devon countryside, pulling practical-jokes on uptight elder-brothers, cuddling with her mummy, as Ginny still sometimes did with Mrs Weasley.

Sirius had never had a family either; at least, not one he had ever been anything but ashamed of and resentful toward. He had been hated and disdained by his elitist parents, and Maia got the impression that Sirius and her father had been strangers, despite being brothers. Differences in ideology had shaped their paths in life, during the War, and so, even if she had asked, Sirius wouldn't have been able to tell her the things about her father she wanted to know.

Last night, when it had been nearly one o'clock and Fred had dozed off at his desk in the attic, she and George had sat on the squashy red-trimmed sofa in the little parlour, sharing a pot of soothing bedtime tea to help them unwind and embrace sleep, Maia had confessed to feeling depressed and somehow isolated, uncertain whether she wanted to be in a crowded room or by herself, upset and angry at Diane, for dying, for leaving her with so many questions unanswered, questions she hadn't known needed answering, for not telling her about her mother, her father, the fate of her aunts and uncle.

George had told her about his uncles, Gideon and Fabian, heroes amongst the Order, incredibly brave men and two of the best wizards of their age, both of whom had been killed during the War. They were Mrs Weasley's only brothers, and the men after whom Fred and George had been named. He said he knew a little about feeling cheated out of knowing his family, his uncles, though it couldn't be the same as all of the incredible losses Maia had to live with. He'd said of everyone, Harry would best sympathise with how she felt.

"Do you ever wonder…" Maia began, sighing; squinting behind her sunglasses at Harry, she sighed, swallowed a bite of apple, and started again. "Do you ever wonder what your parents were like?"

"People tell me all the time that I look like my dad," Harry said, somewhat disgruntled, "and that I have my mum's eyes."

"I meant…their personalities. Who were their friends, what was their favourite sweet, favourite…article of clothing," Maia sighed. "What was their favourite song, and…how did they first meet, when did they start going out?"

"Are you thinking about your parents?" Harry asked, and Maia nodded, sighing as she looked out over the cricket-pitch, which was empty and parched.

"I don't even know what House my mother was in at Hogwarts," she said quietly. "Or my father's birthday. I only know my aunts' and uncle's names from photograph albums, and my brush with the Boggart. Nobody will tell me…what happened to my mother…and Siri—Padfoot…he and my father were strangers, even though they were brothers." She glanced at Harry, taking in the blazing green eyes, lightning scar and general air of unkemptness and lack of love he had grown up with. "Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if your parents hadn't been killed?"

"Sometimes," Harry sighed. "There was…in my first year at Hogwarts, there was this mirror. Erised. Professor Dumbledore says 'it shows nothing more or less than the deepest and most desperate desires of our hearts'. So I saw my family, everyone. I sat in front of that mirror for nights on end."

"You know, Padfoot is…well, he's writing his memoirs," Maia said, and her mood lifted a little; after transcribing anecdotes and editing his incredibly detailed journal entries, Sirius would give Maia the chapters to read. He was working slowly, but everything he wrote was hilarious and heartfelt; it could not have been plainer, reading stories about the boys' first years at Hogwarts, that Sirius Black had loved James Potter better than a brother, that their adventures had been dangerous but exhilarating, filled with the kind of rule-breaking fun Fred and George would have loved to have been a part of.

"His memoirs?"

"I told him he should write down some stories from when he was younger," Maia said, shrugging. "He's embraced the idea; I think he's writing how the Marauder's Map came into being, how he and the others became Animagi… He's writing every year of his time at Hogwarts, working out of his old journals." Glancing at Harry again, she smiled. "You should think about writing some things down."

"Me?"

"Otherwise people two hundred years from now will only know you by Rita Skeeter's articles in the _Prophet_," she chuckled; highly amused by them, Fred and George had retained _Prophet_ articles written about Harry during the Triwizard Tournament, and had shown them to Maia. "Padfoot wants you to go on _Radio_ _Rock_, to let you have your say about the Tournament." Harry flushed, looking at once annoyed and amused. "And if you'd like, I could interview you for the _Talon_."

"What's the _Talon_?" Harry asked curiously.

"Well, it's nothing at the moment," Maia said, yawning. "I'd wondered whether there was a magazine to help Wizards acclimate with Muggles, but there isn't, so Padfoot and Ailith have been trying to convince me to start one, with articles on dress and the postal-service, money and pop-culture; books and films, music, that sort of thing, and Snuffles suggested I do it." She shrugged. "We thought, all of us in the house could contribute a piece of writing. Nonsense-stories, and the twins want to try out their advertising campaigns, and comic-strips; Ron thought about an inter-house chess tournament over the summer; and Neville's been reading a lot of Herbology books, so he wants to do a little section on that; Ginny thought about writing about the Quidditch League. I thought I could tidy up and put in some of my essays from my History and English Lit classes, excerpts from my favourite novels, with the illustrations I've been doing, recipes, and nonsense stories that I make up for Opal."

"Opal?"

"She's a little were-girl," Maia smiled. "Her dad's working with Remus, she's been spending a lot of time with us, I babysit, and we give her spelling lessons, play make-believe. She's very sweet, and precocious; Sirius loves her." She sighed. "Anyway…you look tired."

"I haven't been sleeping well," Harry mumbled. He glanced up at her. "I can't seem to stop thinking what _could_ have happened."

"If you hadn't thrown yourself in front of that curse, you mean?" Maia said. Sirius had said Professor Dumbledore didn't want everybody knowing Harry had survived a second Killing Curse; he already got enough attention. Whatever it meant that Harry had escaped Voldemort's Killing Curse a second time, it couldn't be simple, and she was sure Harry could do without everyone's speculation. It was his business.

"I know what you mean," Maia sighed. "I wonder what would have happened, if you hadn't learned the Patronus Charm. If the Dementors had Kissed Padfoot." She picked apart a little eight-petal flower cookie she had made last night, using cornflower-blue fondant icing and tiny sugar-pearls to decorate them. "I haven't been able to test my Patronus against a Boggart, Kreacher didn't find any others in the house, but I can produce a corporeal Patronus every time I try… I almost hope I never have to test how effective it is against a real Dementor."

"Did Professor Lupin teach you?" Harry asked curiously.

"No, Padfoot," Maia said, stifling a yawn. "Remus has been working very hard lately."

"Professor Lupin was the best teacher I've ever had," Harry said quietly. "_Ever_. He taught me how to produce a Patronus. Without him, I wouldn't have been able to deflect those Dementors who came for Padfoot…" A shiver passed across his thin face, and Maia felt a chill creep over her skin despite the blazing heat of the afternoon, at the thought of what would have happened had Sirius been Kissed by a Dementor.

Remembering the contents of her little bag, Maia reached into it, bringing out a stack of sealed letters. "I, um, forgot to give you these earlier."

"What?" Harry asked curiously.

"Well, since owl-post can't be trusted not to be intercepted, I'm acting as amateur post-girl," Maia smiled. "There's a letter from Ron, some things from Padfoot, a Quidditch magazine Cedric has finished with, and a note from the twins, and one from Mrs Weasley. She'd have put in a care-package too, if I hadn't already sorted you out one."

"Thanks for them, by the way," Harry said, enjoying another roast-beef roll. "Dudley's on a diet. We've had nothing but wilted salad and cottage-cheese."

"Oh dear," Maia grimaced. "Well, is there anything you'd particularly like in your care-packages? Opal and Padfoot are helping me narrow down the recipes I'm planning to turn into recipe-cards, but I need some of the savoury things too, they love sweets too much." Maia brought out her diary, as Harry recalled what he'd liked best from the last care-package she had provided him with.

"Could I write something for the _Talon_?" Harry asked suddenly. Maia glanced up, blinking.

"Okay!" Harry nodded.

"When are you going to put it all together?"

"Well, I haven't technically started it, yet," Maia said. "I've been writing down stories from playing make-believe with Opal, and I've got a lot of paintings that could be put in, and recipes, and some of my assignments, but the others have only talked about things they'd write. I did write to Hermione a few days ago and mentioned the _Talon_ idea to her." She had also written about her ideas; to utilise _Radio Rock_ for advertising, and selling her little knitted animals with a contribution from the income, her recipe-cards.

She had to admit, she did love writing _letters_; one of many reasons why was that, in decades to come, she and Hermione could look back to the very first days of corresponding about S.P.E.W. and tell how their ideas had evolved. They had tangible, physical records of their ideas, their aims and proposals.

"Hermione will probably send something," Harry said, flashing a grin. "Probably on something obscure and difficult, or about _Spew_."

"S.P.E.W.!" Maia exclaimed.

"_S.P.E.W._," Harry chuckled. "If I write it up and send it to you with Hedwig, could you put my piece in?"

"Yes," Maia smiled. "What will you write about?"

"The Patronus Charm," Harry said thoughtfully.

"What form does your Patronus take?" Maia asked curiously.

"A stag," Harry smiled sadly. "My father's Animagus form. What about you, what does your Patronus look like?"

"A hippo," Maia giggled softly, smiling. "I've always liked hippos, ever since I saw the ballerinas in _Fantasia_." Harry chuckled.

"Hippos' teeth can puncture holes right through a human's leg, did you know," he said thoughtfully. "I watched a nature programme the other day when the Dursleys were all out." Maia ran her tongue over her teeth.

"Well, so far I've not felt the desire to nibble anyone's gams," she said, and Harry laughed.

"And I don't go prancing through the woods waiting for hunters to take a shot at me," Harry said, stifling a yawn. Maia laughed.

"The number of times you've been thrown into the line of Voldemort's fire, I'd say you enjoy being target-practice," she chuckled, and Harry gave her a smile. She sighed, yawned, and stretched luxuriously. "I think I'd better get back to London, if I've got a newspaper to create."

"How's your work coming with the pocket-wireless?" Harry asked curiously.

"It's coming," Maia nodded. "Mr Weasley and Padfoot helped me strip the wireless at home; and I've got a wizard carpenter who can supply the casing, and I got the name of a supplier for the dials and receivers. I've got lots of different ideas for how they could be decorated, too; I bought a book on different types of charms for decorating things. I want to hand-paint them, and Lance, who works in the Department of Magical Games and Sports, said I could apply for a licence to brand them with the symbols and colours of the different Quidditch teams."

"Cool!" Harry grinned.

"I also thought about the Triwizard dragons; the Hogwarts Houses' symbols, a phoenix for _Radio Rock_, hand-painted," Maia said, smiling, regaining her excitement that was always lost when her depressed moods hit her. "And different patterns, chevron, polka-dot, quadrefoil, harlequin, flowers of different kinds, all different colours, and Snitches, with different special-effects like fireworks, colour-change and glow-in-the-dark, maybe the constellations."

"Have Fred and George told you about their shop?" Harry asked curiously.

"They have. I put together a workshop for them to use," Maia smiled. "The entrance is password-protected, too, so Mrs Weasley can't get up there. And I've paid for the twins to take some classes at the sweet-shop in Diagon Alley and Madam Primpernelle's with me, to help create or refine some of their products. They've been demonstrating some of their products for me, to cheer me up, they're wonderful." She sighed. "I'd better get back, actually. I'm still putting together the playroom for Opal. She's coming to stay with us; her grandparents are going on holiday, and I had an _idea_ thinking about Doctor Who."

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><p>Thinking about Harry's request to submit a piece on the Patronus Charm to the <em>Talon<em>, and her attempts to turn the playroom into a paradise for little children, going through the contents of trunks and bookcases up in the attic, when Maia returned to Grimmauld Place, in a better mood than she had been upon leaving it, she called a meeting in her bedroom.

"I think we should start _The_ _Talon_," she declared, offering Neville the plate of tiny petit-fours she had made earlier in the morning as another stage in her taste-trials for her recipe-cards, and so she could put a selection in Harry's latest care-package.

"You want to?" Cedric smiled, glancing away from her stuffed corkboards, and Maia nodded.

"Yeah," she said. "It's a good idea. And it'll give us something to do, during the day, and we could get together to have a reading of the paper while the Order has their meetings."

"Where? The den?" Ginny asked.

"No; someone's always broadcasting there during the evenings," Fred pointed out. "I reckon we should keep it secret."

"Might be fun," George remarked, grinning easily. "Give _us_ something the adults don't know anything about."

"Yeah, let _them_ wonder," Fred said, nodding.

"What do you want us to write about?" Neville asked.

"Well, you suggested you could do an article on a different magical plant with each edition," Maia reminded him.

"And I wanted to do Quidditch," Ginny spoke up, examining the contents of Maia's Shaker sewing-box.

"We can premiere your artwork for our advertising campaign in the first edition," George grinned.

"And Harry's submitting a piece about a charm," Maia said, smiling. "I can submit one of my stories that I illustrated for Opal."

"You could serialise it," Cedric smiled warmly. "That's what Charles Dickens did with his novels."

"That's right!" Maia grinned. "Although these stories are make-believes of _Doctor_ _Who _that I've written up, so I'd be breaching copyright laws if Muggles ever found out I was publishing them!"

"Good thing we're a secret newspaper," George grinned, and Maia laughed.

"And, someone could write something about the Battle of the Bands," Fred said. "Maia, you've got photographs, haven't you?"

"Yes," Maia smiled.

"When should we meet?" Ginny asked.

"Tomorrow?"

"Not long enough for us all to put together what we'd like to submit," Cedric said.

"What about if we get together for the reading on Friday-night?" Maia suggested. "Everyone can get their submissions to me by Thursday, and I can put it all together; Friday is always the Order's longest meeting anyway."

"Can we have pennames?" Ginny wondered. "That sounds fun." There was a general consensus that code-names, the more obscure and hilarious the better, were always a lot of fun.

"Are we supposed to do pictures for this?" Neville asked, looking slightly crestfallen.

"You can if you want," Maia said, and Neville bit his lip. "When I put the paper together, I'll fill any empty spaces with illustrations. Or photographs."

"What else could we put in?" Cedric wondered.

"You could write reviews for the novels you've been borrowing from me," Maia suggested. "Someone could do a bit about _Radio_ _Rock_'s historic first broadcast. I know Mad-Eye would love to think someone was writing a piece on elementary wand-safety—I had to write notes when Sirius asked why I _wasn't_ and Mad-Eye had a go at me! And someone could retell a Wizarding bedtime story; I could illustrate a Muggle poem…" She got other ideas; to write a small article on a different Muggle who was famously historical; to write about Muggle currency; to add the Galleon-to-Sterling exchange rate offered at Gringott's, with the exchange-rate between the UK and other countries, perhaps do a piece on the Euro, especially since the devaluation of the Euro was causing so many problems in Greece.

"You could also make up crosswords," someone spoke up, and Maia jumped; Sirius stood in the doorway, completely unnoticed because they were all chuckling over Fred's bid to claim 'Truly Scrumptious' as his penname.

"Sirius!" Ginny squeaked, almost dropping the little raspberry-garnished choux bun she had just taken from the plate Maia had balanced on her over-cluttered desk.

"We thought you were getting ready to broadcast," Maia said, feeling her cheeks warm. There were things she was very confident in; her painting, her sewing, her potioneering and Transfiguration, but when it came to editing her own nonsense newspaper, she was still a nearly-sixteen-year-old who got embarrassed sometimes.

"Almost ready to go," Sirius said, leaning in the doorway and observing Maia's bedroom-walls with his eyebrows raised; the walls were covered for up to nearly four feet in some places with watercolours; photographs; newspaper cuttings; record-sleeves, posters and beadwork samples; fabric swatches; detailed drawings for her pocket-wireless; and layout designs for her recipe-book, complete with sheets of negatives processed after sessions in the kitchen with Ailith, who had agreed to photograph some of her recipe-book, as well as sweet little watercolours of ingredients and patisseries; photographs of Opal, Sirius and Maia in dress-up playing make-believe, of her, Neville and Cedric at Florean Fortescue's, and in the Hogwarts greenhouses; lecture-notes and legal documents; letters from Hermione; knitting-patterns and partially-embroidered handkerchiefs; prototype banners and flags for _Radio_ _Rock_; her _Little Mermaid_ quilt; some of her studies and concepts for Fred and George's commissions; the designs for a fabric makeup-brush roll; the clutch-purse and tote-bag she had sewn the other day, pinned to the wall beside shining designs for numerous tiny pendants, with lengths of different-coloured Irish linen alongside a dainty, diaphanous muslin drawstring bag pinned next to the pattern for a small pillow-box; several little Opal-sized dresses in very pretty prints and sweet designs; iridescent fairy-wings; a sparkling starlight-beaded, tasselled lilac-silk beret, a teeny tiny pair of little fuchsia-flower embellished glitter ballet-flats and a pair of tiny beige crochet ones; several _tiny_ knitted dresses and sweaters pegged with mini clothes-pegs alongside the knitted heads of a mouse, a mole and a badger; the pattern for a hand-sewn letter-case; six embroidery patterns for handkerchiefs, using a Snitch, a dragon, a hippogriff and a silver stag, dainty sunflowers and a collection of her petit-fours; six poster designs for _Radio_ _Rock _pinned side by side; and sheet-music.

"Hey, you're not allowed to spy on us, if we can't eavesdrop on your meetings!" Fred said indignantly.

"I was merely going to ask whether Maia had seen my 'Let's Spend the Night Together' record," Sirius said, quirking an eyebrow at the strategic chaos on Maia's leather-topped desk. "Now I see it's a fool's errand! How do you _find_ anything in here?"

"I know where everything is," Maia said, a little affronted; she stooped to the side of her bed, dislodging a miniature deck-chair on which her completed knitted rabbit in a _tiny _straw hat and knitted dress was reclining; a deck of well-worn cards; a sweet watercolour of Opal; an empty Turkish tea-glass; a postcard-sized piece of watercolour paper filled with little paintings of pâtisserie; the design for a _fez_; a miniature ostrich feather and four other 45-records, to the one at the bottom, _The Rolling Stones_ 'Let's Spend the Night Together'. "See!"

"I stand corrected. Thanks!" Sirius said, surprised, and flashed her a grin. "So, a secret newspaper? You could even put in some of those Arithmancy stars you love solving."

"Yeah, no point looking at us for those," Fred chuckled.

"Hermione doesn't even have a stab at them," Ron added.

"The crossword, that's a good idea," Cedric said; he, Sirius and Maia often argued good-naturedly over who got to fill in the crosswords in the _Daily_ _Prophet_. They had reached an accord now, Sirius using magic to create copies so they could each complete their own.

"I'm going to record the best moves from our chess matches," Ron said. "And keep score of the inter-Order Chess Tournament."

"Really should record the odds you'll win against Maia," George said thoughtfully, glancing at Ron.

"I can!"

"She's already beaten Kingsley, Madam Marchbanks_ and_ Bill," Ginny pointed out. "And Bill taught _you_ how to play; you know he's the best." Ginny spoke with such finality about her eldest-brother; it couldn't have been plainer that Bill was her favourite brother.

"Yeah, well, I know who your money's on!" Ron grumbled.

"So, are you all coming downstairs to listen?" Sirius asked. "Maia, do you have those entries for the competition?"

"Yes, they're here," Maia said, going to her desk, where she retrieved the first few dozen entries into the t-shirt competition for _Radio Rock_. She had been going over them last night while Sirius broadcasted, putting the designs already received to a vote amongst everyone present in the den. Some of them were actually quite good; they were holding out for another three weeks, hoping to get another few brilliant designs, meanwhile Maia had already sourced the soft cotton t-shirts and had worked out the cost of printing them, the beaded embroidery on one of the women's designs, how much the finished products would cost, had approached Mal about putting _Radio Rock_ merchandise owl-order forms by his cash-register, once she'd finished putting one together.

"Excellent," Sirius said, taking the designs from her.

"I'll bring some dinner in to you while you're broadcasting, if you want," Maia said; the temperature up to about forty every day, the heat lingering long after the sun had dyed the skies with a glorious sunset each night, so they had gotten in the habit of eating later, and utilising Maia's recipes for light, summery meals. By the time the rest of them would be eating, Sirius would be mid-broadcast. Listeners of _Radio_ _Rock_ were treated to a blow-by-blow of Sirius' daily meals, extolling 'Niecey's' culinary skills, and the virtues of a 'Hobbit diet'.

Maia had received several letters, addressed to 'Niecey, Radio Rock', from witches who wanted the recipes for some of the things Sirius mentioned during a broadcast, which Sirius thought a good idea, as good advertising for when she finished putting together and printed her recipe-cards.

"Okay," Sirius nodded. He turned to leave, then caught himself. "Hey, you didn't tell me how Harry's doing."

"He's doing alright, I think; his aunt and uncle haven't locked his things under the stairs, at least," Maia said. "They're all on a diet because of his cousin, so he was looking forward to the care-package. Oh." She scanned her room, frowning, and dived for the tiny bag on the bed. She had forgotten that Harry had given her a stack of letters when they had reached the playground earlier; she was to deliver them to Ron and Sirius. He had already sent a letter via Hedwig, his beautiful snowy owl, to Hermione. "I forgot to divvy these out… Ron, this one's for you. And this one's for you, Sirius. Harry asked me to deliver them." She handed the sealed letters over, and Sirius drifted away with his record, opening the letter from his much-beloved godson.

"So, we've got until Thursday to give you our articles," Fred said, as if there had been no interruption.

"Yes, I think that would do," Maia nodded.

"Are we only going to do it once a week?" Neville asked, again looking a little crestfallen. Maia had noticed that, despite being a very nice boy, always having something encouraging or polite to say, Neville kept to himself, and seemed thrilled to be included with the twins' jokes or chatting with Cedric about Quidditch or the rare plants he read about, helping Cedric with his N.E.W.T.-level Herbology homework. He was _very_ good at Herbology; Maia liked spending time with him in the greenhouses at Hogwarts, somehow he reminded her a little of Samwise Gamgee from _The Lord of the Rings_, so cheerful by himself, with his plants, a love of things that _grew_. But she got the impression that he had very few friends at school, if any at all; Neville usually stayed in the study with her while she went through her Potions textbooks, reviewing everything he could from his past four years at school in an attempt at starting revision early for his O.W.L. exams in June. But Neville liked it when all of them spent time hanging out together, not doing their own thing, scattered throughout the house. She felt it; when all of them were together, she felt _connected_. She didn't feel so lonely. She imagined Neville felt the same way.

"I don't know; what does everyone else want to do?" Maia asked.

"How about we see how it goes?" George suggested. "We could do two or three issues a week, depending on what we've got to contribute to them."

"It's not like we've got tonnes of other things to keep us occupied," Ginny added, rather glumly; Maia being the only other girl in the house, two years her senior, and a stranger, they hadn't bonded the way Maia had with the twins, and Ginny was prevented going out with Maia and the boys, which they did most evenings, to the music-bars, even just to wander to Florean Fortescue's, or to the dances organised in a hall in Diagon Alley, or gigs at the _Sunflower_ or the _Brass Jobberknoll_, which made Ginny rather resentful over Maia being allowed to go out.

"When are we going to visit your Hobbit-hole?" Cedric asked Maia curiously. "You said we could go and play Quidditch there, and go to the beach."

"Whenever you like," Maia said, shrugging. "Remus bought some Floo Powder, so Neville and Ginny can get there, and we can bring Opal, too." She knew that despite it being now _her_ house, she couldn't expect everyone to stay in Grimmauld Place if they wanted to go and get some fresh air and play Quidditch, if she had lessons with Professor McGonagall or Professor Sprout all day. But she didn't want to miss out on the fun, something she knew Ginny resented from the stories the boys told her in the mornings after going out the night before.

With the date set for their first day-trip to the Hobbit-hole, so the boys could play Quidditch and they could take Opal to the seaside, and the prospect of the first gathering of _The_ _Talon _staff, they meandered back downstairs to the den to listen to Sirius' broadcast, each of them occupied by their own hobbies and projects, anticipating the Order's Friday-night meeting. Finishing up the latest batch of _Radio Rock_ badges she intended to get to Mal at the record-shop, Maia relaxed, doing nothing but listening to _The_ _Puffskeins_, eyes closed, ankles crossed on the coffee-table, and when she picked up one of her sewing-kits that she had brought downstairs, she remembered distinctly the scene in the Winona Ryder film version of _Little_ _Women_ when the girls were in the attic reading out the _Pickwick_ _Portfolio_; they had had a banner, and individual badges pinned to their costumes.

She went to bed a little earlier than usual, having a lesson with Professor McGonagall the following day, but not before creating ten badges using some gold silk and her badge-maker, with ruby glitter spelling out '_The Talon_', and utilising so many of the glittering, sparkling, glowing special-effects charms Maia had learned that they were eye-watering to look at, the outer edge of the badge glittering gold, a soft but dazzling golden light emanating from it in rings while champagne-gold fireworks flashed around it every few heartbeats like a miniature Catherine-wheel, with another ring sparkling with a continuous gold band of shimmering fireworks.

She had also sewn a small burning-gold banner with shining golden sunlight-beads, firework-crystals and shimmering golden thread, utilising the same charms as on the badges and the embroidery charms Mrs Weasley had taught her, transferring the phoenix on the badges to the banner in animated embroidery, superimposed over the background of the _Leo_ and _Pleiades_ constellations, a champagne-gold badger paw-print, with the words '_The Talon_' writing themselves in sparkling beaded iridescent-ruby silk so fine it felt like warm-water over her skin, following in the wake of a vividly-scarlet burning phoenix with golden tail, beak and talons.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review.


	21. Chapter 21

**A.N.**: I haven't updated in a few days, so here's chapter twenty-one.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_21_

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><p>"Who amongst you is ready to tie your hopes and dreams to the sea—?"<p>

"I am!" Opal cried enthusiastically, beaming.

"Not finished yet!" Sirius said exasperatedly. Opal's face dimpled as she leaned back against Maia's legs, dressed in an open buttoned Georgian coat with huge cuffs, a silk sash tied around her waist, a battered leather tri-corn hat on her gorgeous blonde curls, and having the time of her life.

"And who amongst you has the courage and fortitude to stay true in the face of danger and almost-certain death?" Sirius growled, a patch over his eye, a large plumed hat on his head, a pistol and rapier tucked into his thick belt, long legs strapped in brown leather boots eating up the carpet as he circled the captives. Opal giggled. "What—what is that? Giggling. _Giggling_—on my ship! _What did you say_?!"

"I said I'm ready, Cap'n," George grinned, for Sirius had rounded on him for grinning at Opal's delicious little laugh.

"And who be you?" Sirius growled.

"Handsome," George smirked. "Feared by men, greatly desired by the ladies." Opal snorted.

"Excellent!" Sirius growled. "Cut him loose, Sweetie." Maia, with a long sash tied like a bandana around her head, a long, embroidered waistcoat tied around her waist with a brown-leather belt in which was tucked an Arabian sword, and a pair of knee-high brown pirate-boots, smirked and pretended to slash the 'ropes' binding George, Ginny, Neville and an unwilling Crookshanks to the 'mast' of their play-area. Sirius handed him a battered straw tri-corn hat, and George grinned as he tied a cravat around his neck, tucking a sabre into his belt. "Your job will be to ration each sailor onboard his dram o' rum. Mind you don't indulge and tip overboard; Davy Jones'll have you!" Stooping at the waist, Sirius scowled at Opal, growling, "And who be you?"

"Just Opie!" Opal chirped. "I'll lie under your bed and cut your head off when you sleep!" Sirius did a slight double-take, before arching an eyebrow.

"You'll make a first-class riggin'-gel," he growled, indicating the birds-nest at the top of the knotted rigging Maia had strung up in the corner of the playroom. "Keep a sharp eye for the King's colours."

"Aye, aye, Cap'n!" Scurrying over to the rigging, Opal stuck her tongue between her teeth, paused, and started tackling the rigging, panting and grimacing to climb to the top without falling, and she stood in the birds'-nest with a long telescope.

The playroom Maia had put together, utilising what was already in the room and everything she had found up in the attics, had been a huge hit. The pirate-ship; the village of dollhouses; the rocking-dragon and hobby-hippogriff; the chest of costumes; the puppet-theatre; the "Queen's dressing-table"; the tea-table set with numerous teacups and cake-stands, with the March Hare and the dormouse in attendance and a mural of Alice walking through the gates of Underland, with all the talking flowers, dragon-flies and rocking-horse-flies, animal topiaries, the dodo, the Tweedles, and Absalom in his patch of mushrooms, sucking on a hookah; the faux beach with a deck-chair, a palm-tree, a painted mural inspired by _The Blue Lagoon_ and a makeshift little hut draped inside with diaphanous white tulle, coconut-shells for bowls and a collection of silver teaspoons, a music-box and collection of sea-shells and sea-anemones, a stuffed parrot and a little white hammock; Rapunzel's window, accessed by a little ladder hidden by the faux stonework of the wall, complete with a long braid to climb; the miniature three-person carousel featuring a unicorn, a phoenix and a dragon, fully operational and musical; the collection of dolls she was in the process of giving new wardrobes; the refurbished old dresser that now bore a clothing rail and a lot of the repaired antique clothes for costumes; the 'zone of tranquillity', a corner created to look like a Moroccan tent, with pouffs and floor-pillows, and low bookcases filled with children's stories, where Opal could sit and read by herself with Spike. As the Doctor would say, "Masterpiece!"

Maia had a second watercolour to add to _The_ _Talon_ by the end of the day; she had painted their day's adventure, sinking a passenger ship bound for the Caribbean and taking on some of the crew as their new recruits, pillaging a Spanish treasure-ship, putting each of them—Sirius, Opal, Ginny, Neville, George and Maia herself—in full pirate costume, onboard a sun-soaked, black-sailed ship complete with pet monkey and a few captives locked in the brig, as if they were extras on _Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl_—the inspiration for their day's make-believe.

Ginny was slightly in love with Jack Sparrow—championed only by Opal in her affection for the rum-saturated pirate. It had fallen upon Maia yesterday to visit _HMV_ and buy up every age-appropriate Johnny Depp film not in Sirius' collection; a learning experience for Ginny, who had become entranced by the iPod display while Opal chatted on and on about her Muggle uncle's iPad.

She sat laughing to herself over the finished watercolour, because it so brought to life their make-believe adventures; she had remembered all the details of everybody's made-up characters, their appearances; her own wild, berserker-braided and dreadlocked, beaded hair, the long bandana over her head, her shining Arabian sword, her bare, sunburned arms, leather vest and vibrant sash, and her catchphrase, "Hello, sweetie", from which she got her pirate-name; Ginny's fiery mane of hair tumbling out of a plait and the scar down her left cheek; George's rakish grin, tattered shirt and bare feet, and his pistol; Sirius' eye-patch, mango snacks and hipflask of rum; Opal's flashing telescope as she watched the horizon at the top of the mast, a colourful little speck of embroidered silk, battered leather, with a silver knife clamped between her pearly teeth and her little freed-slave boyfriend in his little boater-hat and tattered trousers; Neville, the 'honest pirate', with Pretty Baby, his pet monkey. All of them sun-drenched, the sky blisteringly blue, the clear Caribbean glittering, dolphins leaping up through the surf at the helm, she almost wished it could all have been real. Smiling, she turned to the story she had written, their make-believe recorded properly, and titled it _Opie: Misadventures of a Girl Stowaway_, 'Chapter One: Accidental Captive'.

She had the ghostly image of a stag painted in silver, ice-blue and white on a midnight-blue background, utilising charms to make the stag rear its head proudly, ghostly swirls of silvery mist billowing at its hooves, seemingly pulsating with radiating silvery light, to accompany Harry's submission to _The_ _Talon_, a detailed description of how to produce a Patronus Charm; when their pieces were complete, the others had given Maia them to put together in one newspaper, and she was still waiting for a few. She hadn't read the ones she had already received; that would take the fun out of their meeting on Friday-night, but she had examined some of the illustrations George had submitted, to put in blank spaces just as she was doing, developing several photographs. He was a very talented artist, with a different style to Maia's, and she liked his artwork, the colour, the expressions in his characters' faces, the costumes.

After a long day with Professor McGonagall, she had unwound for a few hours at the Hobbit-hole, the first time the Weasleys, Cedric and Neville had visited the place, with Opal, who had Side-Along Apparated with Sirius bearing a bucket and spade. Tired, she had had a nap in the sun; tended her bees; done four paintings—little Pip meeting pretty Estella for the first time by Miss Havisham's ghostly butterfly cabinet; the Bennett sisters from _Pride and Prejudice_; Helena, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius in the fairy-forest outside Athens; and Cupid accidentally creating the purple 'Love-in-Idleness' flower from a wild pansy, the love-potion Puck uses in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, a commission for the twins—and had splashed along the beach with Opal, had a sandcastle-building competition and cooked fresh omelettes over an open flame for a late-lunch. Opal had declared she was moving in to the Hobbit-hole, and any correspondence should be addressed 'Opal Baggins, Bag End'.

Now, sitting in her room, the rest of the house quiet but for the studio, where Vittorio was doing the night-watch broadcast, she had finished her latest essay for Professor Flitwick to mark, had finished the assignment Professor Vector had set her via owl-post for her Arithmancy study, and was now in the process of piecing together the first issue of _The Talon_.

_The Supremes_ playing softly on her record-player, snacking on some pâtisserie she had made yesterday, a double-lined glass teacup of pomegranate-arils and a contraband packet of _Quavers_ and an icy _Diet_ _Coke_, a knock sounded softly on her open door. Unless she was working and didn't want to be disturbed during the day, her bedroom-door remained open. Especially at night; Opal had a habit of climbing in with her when she was afraid the face-spiders in her closet and the Ringwraith under her bed were out to eat her toes and lay eggs in her nostrils. All of that was thanks to Sirius, who liked to tell Opal incredibly vivid stories before bedtime, half-terrifying himself in the process, and making it very easy for Maia, or the twins, to make him scream "like a little tiny girl!" whenever they hid in a darkened corner, bided their time, and jumped out at him.

It was George, and evidence of the last time he had jumped out at Sirius was bruised around his left eye, the result of Sirius punching him in reaction to being startled out of his wits, the 'fight or flight' reflex having kicked in; George had just laughed, and Fred and Maia had been no help, giggling themselves silly. Mrs Weasley had forbidden them to do it anymore, convinced Sirius would forget himself and curse them. The bruise was healing, no longer a lurid blackish-fuchsia, and he scanned her room before finding her at the desk and grinning.

"I thought I saw your light on," he said, smiling. "Can I come in?" Maia nodded, indicating the little footstool by her desk, and after removing a pile of magazines, records, watercolours and the plate of snacks she had been indulging in, George sat down.

"I thought you and Fred were upstairs," Maia said, quietly, because Opal's bedroom was opposite hers, and she kept her door open.

"We finished early," George said, stifling a yawn. He gave her a very sweet smile. "We finished those fireworks." Maia beamed, sitting around in her chair, setting down her wand, which she had been using to trim the articles the others had given her for _The_ _Talon_.

"The flowers or the dragons?" she asked, smiling delightedly; the twins had come up with different ranges of enchanted fireworks in all different designs, with side-effects like multiplying every time someone tried to Vanish them or Stun them: they had created some that exploded in an array of champagne-gold butterflies; another that started off like a great golden star, each ray of light shimmering as it drifted to the ground, each droplet of light transforming into a five-petal flower; firecrackers that went off like mines; she had seen designs for a wave-like silvery ice-blue rocket that featured unicorns running among the surf, sparklers that spelled swear-words, Catherine-wheels, and both life-size and miniature dragons made entirely of fireworks, and, "for the ladies," George had smiled, a collection of fireworks that came _scented_, in the most beautiful flowers the twins had found in their Herbology textbooks; roses, sunflowers, violets, lilies, hydrangeas with tiny fluttering butterfly-like petals, peonies and irises, lotus flowers and orchids, bluebells that chimed, dainty sparkling silver lily-of-the-valley, cherry-blossoms, star-centred zinnias, ranunculus and anemones, poppies and sweet-peas, freesias and tuberoses, all sparkling, glittering, mother-of-pearl sheens and diamond-bright colours. The miniature dragons were very fun, snapping and snarling at each other, careening and gambolling in aero-gymnastic displays, mimicking true dragon breeds—Opal-Eyes, Chinese Fireballs, Swedish Shortsnout, Welsh Green, etc.

"All of the flowers are finished," George said, smiling happily. "We're still working on a few of the miniature dragons. We thought we could give a display of them at the Hobbit-hole one afternoon."

Mrs Weasley didn't come with them to the Hobbit-hole; actually, she was forbidden from going with them, because Maia knew she would hover anxiously, scold if they got too boisterous, and make everybody awkward and prevent them behaving naturally and having fun.

Sirius butted heads with Mrs Weasley over how the teenagers should spend their summer, especially since they were guests in Sirius' house and under his supervision; Sirius advocated experimentation and fun balanced with learning, but the emphasis on enjoying themselves, encouraging them to explore new things and taking a hands-off approach to watching over them, enjoying their fun with them rather than trying to stop them having any in case they got hurt. Mrs Weasley, despite her charms, was not always a woman with whom it was easy to get along; she alone thought she knew best for her children—and everybody else's—had to be in control, and would scold when she thought they were getting too boisterous, which put her at odds with Sirius, who enjoyed the noise and the enthusiasm after so long in Azkaban.

Several times Maia had seen Mrs Weasley's expression when the twins or Ginny were playing with Opal, as if she was afraid the little were-girl would try and take a chunk out of her children. If Mrs Weasley didn't say it outright, Maia had confessed to Remus that she knew Mrs Weasley didn't approve of Opal being in close proximity with her children. But it was that very prejudice and preconceived notions that all werewolves were blood-hungry and mindless even in human-form that she wanted to help Remus fight. The twins, unusually perceptive of their mother's many whims and emotions, sometimes very loudly told her their opinions on her hovering over them, making things awkward while they were trying to have fun with Opal, ruining the atmosphere with her shouting when they were all breathless and aching from laughing; Fred had even gone so far one afternoon as to tell Mrs Weasley that he wished she would stay at the Burrow, because she was just ruining everybody's fun.

Having said this in the aftermath of Mr Weasley's argument and Percy's disowning of the family, this probably had not been the most tactful of things for Fred to say; it had taken Bill and Remus all evening to talk Mrs Weasley out of her tears.

Mrs Weasley also didn't like anyone, even Maia, Cedric or Neville, 'squandering' the day playing board-games or 'doodling', even if they had been taking lessons with the Professors all the previous day or worked on their homework at night. There again, Sirius and Mrs Weasley butted heads, because Sirius of anyone knew that childhood came once, and whatever came next, if they had only these happy memories left, that could keep a lot of people going—especially, if her adult life was to be anything like Remus's, Opal.

The matter in which Maia wouldn't back down was Mrs Weasley's constant need to clean and boss people around: it was Maia and Sirius' house, and if things needed washing or sweeping or scrubbing, they, or Kreacher, would do it; but everyone else was a guest in their house, and Maia didn't want anybody tense or angry because Mrs Weasley had forced them to abandon their hobbies, especially when, like Maia, or Cedric, they had spent a good part of their day studying and doing work. With the glorious weather prompting them all to walk to Diagon Alley every day or visit the Hobbit-hole, resentment for Mrs Weasley grew every time she tried to order them to go through storage-rooms or help with the dinner. But, as Maia said, it was her and Sirius' house, and if disused rooms needed to be organised and cleaned out, she and Sirius would do it, and she wouldn't have anyone missing out on the chance to enjoy their summer by being forced to scrub mould from dresser-drawers.

And as far as helping to cook was concerned, _she_ was still in charge of all of the meals, because Mrs Weasley, for all she was a wonderful cook, was a typical _English_ housewife and knew how to make wonderful stews and pies and soups aplenty, but the weather was just too hot for that kind of heavy cooking; Maia's skewers, salads, fresh seafood dishes, homemade pasta, Swedish meatballs and exotic Mediterranean and North African dishes, open-faced baguette sandwiches for snacks, French dishes modified for the heat, and _barbecue_ were much-celebrated by everyone who stopped by for dinner: One of Sirius' great pleasures was to stand on the front porch-step, surrounded by Maia's and Neville's potted plants that Opal helped water every evening before bed, at the small but fully-functional barbecue tucked up against the rail, with a Butterbeer in one hand, tongs in the other, turning foil-wrapped corn-on-the-cob, flipping burgers, sausages, marinated chicken, pork or shrimp, and vegetable kebabs.

The twins had to be careful to keep all of their shop things in the attic-room, protected by the mirror; and thus, everybody else had to be careful what they said to the twins in front of their mother. It seemed everyone but Mrs Weasley knew that the twins were still going full-steam ahead with their joke-shop; but any time the twins acted with their usual boisterousness and fervour for mischief, she would scold, and shout, and make it very awkward for everyone in the house. Most of the time, she chose to remain in her room with her knitting and _Witching Hour_ on her and Mr Weasley's wireless, oblivious to Sirius advertising her sons' business during his broadcasts, and clueless that Maia and Ginny sat upstairs in the twins' workshop putting together owl-orders while the twins mopped their brows, sweating by simmering cauldrons, wearing one of Maia's floral aprons each, or very carefully measuring out explosives, made notes and kept a book on Healing on-hand while one of them tested out their merchandise.

Fred was right about one thing; because of the recent argument with Percy, Mrs Weasley was very emotional, and tended to ruin everyone's fun. Maia lived in constant anxiety that someone would reveal the ever-changing password up to the attic, and Mrs Weasley would discover the workshop. The amount of time and effort the twins had put into their products, the creativity and ingenuity and perseverance required were admirable, she hated to think that Mrs Weasley, so outspoken about supporting her children in their every endeavour, would throw away all her twin sons' inventions simply because she disapproved.

So when something creaked out in the playroom, Maia froze, listening hard, anxious that it was Mrs Weasley overhearing their discussion about the twins' invented fireworks. Footsteps sounded downstairs, and George let out a breath of relief; catching her eye, they both laughed.

"Are you putting _The Talon_ together?" George asked, peering at the clutter on her desk.

"Yes, and no, you can't have a sneak-peek," Maia smiled, shielding the documents on the leather-topped, incredibly cluttered desk.

"I wasn't going to sneak!" George grinned. "Although, I know what the next headline should be."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. 'Maia Black finally gets on a broom!'" George smirked. "When are we going to get you playing Quidditch?"

"Not today," Maia yawned, catching sight of the tiny watch-face propped up on the panelling ledge above the desk. It was past midnight; it had officially become 'tomorrow'. "I've got Herbology."

"I don't understand why you actually _want_ to go to school during the summer holidays," George shook his head.

"Personal betterment, a full education," Maia said, chuckling, and George just shook his head again.

"You've just finished sitting all of your exams," he said. "Shouldn't you be taking a break for the next decade?"

"Those were Muggle exams," Maia sighed, stifling a yawn.

"So you're trying to catch up on four years in three months," George said, giving her the kind of look Sirius gave her whenever she did something unnaturally _responsible_ for a girl her age.

"Most Hogwarts students aren't getting one-on-one tutoring from the professors," Maia pointed out. "It makes a difference, having that proximity; Professor McGonagall says I've made more progress with her in only a few day-long lessons than in an entire year sitting in her class, because she can dedicate the attention I need." And Maia practiced. A lot.

She got along well with Professor McGonagall, who was strict but fair, and who had told Sirius that Maia might be one of the most gifted students she had taught in her nearly-forty years at Hogwarts. Maia thought that was down to having one-to-one supervision, but it also helped that Maia practiced a lot, ignoring the laws against witches and wizards under seventeen not using magic—to Ron's and Ginny's disgruntlement, given Mrs Weasley had confiscated their wands at the beginning of the summer holidays—and had been studying further ahead in Tonks' old textbooks on her own.

"Fred and I always learned more on our own than we ever did in lessons," George said, going through some of the watercolours he had moved off his stool. "Though I will admit, we always paid attention in Transfiguration."

"I wouldn't have thought Professor McGonagall would let anyone get away with slacking off in her lessons," Maia said thoughtfully. George chuckled.

"No. That, and Potions; we always kept our noses clean in Snape's lessons," he said; Maia raised an eyebrow at him disbelievingly. George chuckled. "Alright, _relatively_ clean. Otherwise they would have been un_bear_ably dull. But with all the potions we're brewing up nowadays, it's good Snape taught us the groundwork first, properly. Otherwise we'd probably have killed ourselves in a lab-accident already."

"Mm. Or turned yourselves into super-villains," Maia chuckled. "I can see you two as evil geniuses in your own comic-book." George laughed.

"The D_evil_ution of Gred and Forge," he chuckled. Maia smiled.

"At the very least you could serialise your old adventures at Hogwarts in a comic," she said softly, and George grinned.

"Good branding for the business," he said, eyes sparkling.

"You'd have all the kiddies wanting to recreate your old pranks," Maia added, and George grinned.

"Talk about _me_ being responsible for you getting more ideas for projects, you're just as bad," he laughed, glancing around for some notepaper; she handed him a stylus and a pot of ink, and he hastily started scribbling, smiling to himself.

"The only solution is to stop speaking to each other once and for all," Maia laughed.

"Not an option," George smiled, glancing up at her through his lashes. "If only because you get us to stop working and eat something every few hours."

"You should start calling me 'Nanny'," Maia chuckled.

"Or not," George grinned. "You don't have any tea on the go, do you?"

"Um…no," Maia said, glancing around for her tea-tray, a brass one with two-inch high sides that could be placed on removable, folding legs, and on which she had brought up a lot of her things from the den, in a bid to tidy up that room and gather her things in a single place, the easier to find them for her various projects, as well as the pâtisserie she had made, and the pomegranate arils. "I can go and put on a pot, though."

"You don't have to do that," George said, glancing up, a smear of ink on his upper-lip where he'd brushed his finger across his mouth in thought.

"No, it's alright," Maia smiled. Of the two twins, she found herself liking George more and more. The twins were both outrageously outgoing and irrepressible—she could see them as brilliant stand-up comedians doing ad-lib—and to begin with, she had liked Fred because he'd forced her to act out mischievously and have fun, but she talked more with George, and they laughed; he appreciated her sense of humour, and she found herself being funnier, bouncing jokes and innuendo off George; there were more nights like this, when they'd find themselves together, each working on their own projects, perfectly content to be quiet, working, listening to music and sharing a pot of tea, chatting about their ideas and exchanging artwork and bouncing ideas back and forth, _laughing_. It was dangerous, because sometimes they found themselves looking at the clock at three in the morning, Fred fast asleep and snoring, wondering where the time had gone while they talked quickly and enthusiastically about everything, and nothing important, and anything they could think of.

George had very quickly become her _friend_. Perhaps because he, like Fred, was so outgoing, unwilling to let anyone sit out on the fun they were having; she had always loved fun, had been the mischief-maker nobody could blame at school because of her magic, and despite having a lot of friends in the Muggle world, in this new one she had only the people living in this house. She couldn't believe there were any better people in the world than the ones she had met, and the Weasley twins especially had become almost the heart of this large, obscure, somewhat dysfunctional family. They were the heart and funny-bone of the body that made up the residents of Grimmauld Place, aided and indulged by Sirius, despaired over by Mrs Weasley, who constantly had to be reassured about their future employment-prospects by Remus and Bill—who both knew about _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ but kept up the pretence that the twins could land any job they went after out of pure charisma—and completely and utterly adored by Opal.

Thrown together in relatively small quarters, forced upstairs out of earshot into one of two rooms when the Order had their meetings, Maia had become very close with several other residents of Grimmauld Place very quickly. Neville was one; the twins, two others, and after the first few days of resentment over Maia's being allowed by Sirius to go out at night and have the use of her wand to perform magic, Ginny. Cedric kept very much to himself, helping Kreacher go through the contents of the library, or else reading Maia's Muggle novels, visiting _Flourish and Blotts_ or Apparating to meet his friends or his girlfriend Cho all over England; and Ron also kept to himself, eating, reading Quidditch magazines, listening to _Radio_ _Rock_ and playing chess with anyone who would sit down to a game with him.

This wasn't the first time George had come into her room to chat, share a pot of tea and paint; but George was the first boy ever to come into her bedroom. Having never had any visitors but magical ones who weren't deflected from the estate by powerful magic her ancestors had put on their property, Maia had never had friends over to her house, never had a sleepover or even her boyfriends over for tea to meet Diane. After the first few times when they had holed up in here—sometimes with Fred, most of the time not—it had become incredibly comfortable for the two of them to rub along, chatting, working, exploring ideas and exchanging artwork; her walls were now papered with some of George's paintings, most of which depicted moments here in Grimmauld Place, or Diagon Alley; this afternoon, he had done several of the Hobbit-hole. She was also teaching him more about photography, and they had gone through some of the antique cameras she had found upstairs.

"We could go and sneak some of that chocolate-mousse I made for tomorrow," Maia said softly, and George grinned, setting his notes and stylus down on her desk. Grabbing her hand, George stifled a laugh as Maia giggled and they danced downstairs, soft-footed. Only with Maia did George seem to forget his ability to Apparate; he and Fred took great delight in popping in and out of every room at unexpected times, driving their mother round the bend and making everybody else jump.

Sharing a small ramekin of rich chocolate-mousse (the fourth batch of chocolate-mousse in a fortnight, each made using a different recipe, the favourite to be put into her recipe-book after an Order-wide vote) and a cup of tea apiece, they sat back in Maia's room, George reclining at the end of her bed because the footstool wasn't the most comfortable of seats for a larger person, while Maia sat propped up against her pillows, an artist's clipboard in her lap, sharing the spread of little glass teacups on her little brass tray, filled with coloured water to rinse their brushes. Distracted from one of her commissions for the twins—a variation on Cupid's creation of Love-in-Idleness she had done earlier; the twins liked to have three or four choices, from which they put together different aspects of the artwork that they liked, suggesting things to go into a final piece of artwork—Maia sat, subtly watching George.

She liked to look at George. Broad-shouldered, with an easy grin very tall and strong, he had gorgeous arm-muscles from Beater's practice with the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and he had the rare complexion amongst redheads that tanned as much as it freckled; his eyebrows a darker auburn, like his eyelashes and the stubble that shadowed a jaw that was masculine but not too strong, she liked the slope of his nose, and the brightness and mischief inherent in his deep navy eyes. They were sometimes far warmer and sweet than Maia expected them to be; George was the gentler of the two most boisterous, hilarious boys she had ever met. And his smiles could sometimes be very sweet. She had never before thought redheads were in any way attractive; but gazing at George…he was.

While he wrote steadily, with the ink and paper Maia had given him, Maia set aside her painting, taping a fresh piece of watercolour-paper to her board, and started painting a new portrait. Getting just the right flaming crimson-red of George's hair in the deep amber-gold light of her bedroom was difficult, but she managed it, and the portrait of his profile came out beautifully.

"If you keep checking me out, you're never going to finish that Cupid painting," George remarked, and he was grinning sweetly when he glanced at her, eyes twinkling.

"I'll manage," she answered softly, smiling to herself. Flirting was something she was okay at; her best tactics were used to deflect unwanted attention from blokes at the _Weeping Sunflower_, particularly to give the illusion that she and Tonks were lovers. At school she had had boyfriends since she was thirteen, never serious because of her age and relative isolation in her family's magically-protected estate. But she was playful, and flirtatious when she wanted to be, and highly social; being a highly intelligent girl, she was also exquisitely articulate, and being told she was pretty, she had come to accept that she would sometimes receive unwanted attention; but sometimes she would enjoy it. She and George flirted a lot, but it was that _playful_ flirtation, teasing each other, tickling, touching, catching each other's attention because they liked each other's reactions. Maia _liked_ George. He was good-looking, fun and intelligent; they had fun together, and Maia did like it when she thought he was flirting with her.

"Maia?" George said quietly, several moments later, when she was peeling the masking-tape from her board, gently blowing on the watercolour of George to dry the paint.

"Mm?"

"Why don't you have a… Do you have a boyfriend?" George asked. Maia tried not to look at him, flushing subtly. What was he…was he asking her…? She blew another breath onto the painting, drying it off.

"I _did_," she said thoughtfully.

"What happened?" George asked curiously. Maia frowned slightly.

"I turned him into an octopus." George burst out laughing. "Shh!" Maia whispered, grinning, glancing at her bedroom-door, which was still ajar from when they had snuck down for chocolate-mousse and a cup of tea. "Someone will hear you!"

"It's nearly two! Everyone's asleep; even Vittorio's gone," George reminded her, smiling, and Maia couldn't help smiling back. She rinsed off her brushes, Vanished the water out of the double-lined teacups, set the brass tray on the floor, and yawned, stretching luxuriously, before climbing onto her front, so that she was lying alongside George. Grabbing a pillow, she rested her head on it, gazing up at George. Reaching over the edge of the bed, George set down his notes and carefully screwed the lid on his borrowed pot of ink; plumping the pillow Maia had given him to lean against, he yawned and settled on his side beside her.

"S'pose I should go to bed," he murmured, eyes closed.

"Mm," Maia hummed.

The next thing she knew, she drifted into consciousness with the sun streaming into her room, warm and utterly relaxed, comfortable in the extreme, something heavy draped over her waist, her back against something warm and nice-smelling, while a little ball was tucked against her stomach; gold glinted, and as she squirmed luxuriously, getting the impression that it was something boy-shaped she had her back pressed against, she realised that Opal must have climbed in with her sometime earlier in the morning, because she was spread out like a starfish over two-thirds of the double-bed, sucking her thumb.

Maia remained where she was, lodged with wonderful closeness against George, to use the correct term, _spooning_, because she was so comfortable, and it was a nice feeling.

The second time she emerged into consciousness, Kreacher was bringing her the first cup of tea of the morning. Opal was also lying sprawled over her, her back to Maia's front. And George was gone.

She poked Opal: with a snort, the little girl jerked awake, her little body digging into Maia's stomach.

"Off, you little urchin!" Maia grumbled.

"Why was George cuddling with you?" Opal asked, displaying her usual knack of innocently commenting on things that might embarrass others or things she shouldn't perhaps know about (like declaring she wanted to 'sex' Vittorio, whom she thought was 'dreamy'; Opal's dad Jules blamed her cousins).

"Because he fell asleep here," Maia yawned, sipping her tea, sighing with relief; she didn't feel like herself without that first cup of tea.

"Were you painting again?" Opal asked, in a vaguely disapproving tone, yawning as she fidgeted around the bed, glancing at her with wide, already bright eyes, all traces of sleepiness gone. Maia nodded, blowing on her tea and offering Opal a sip.

"So what are you going to do while I'm at school with Neville?" she asked, taking back her teacup, watching Opal as she leaned back against the mound of pillows, ankles crossed, hands behind her head. She quickly reached for the camera, capturing the image, and she chuckled softly as Opal sighed, pouting.

"I'll play with Uncle Padfoot," she said. "Can Cedric or George take me flying again?"

"You'll have to ask them," Maia said.

"I like Quidditch," Opal said thoughtfully. "I think I'll be a Quidditch player when I grow up."

"Are you going to be a girly Viktor Krum?"

"Ron calls him _Vikki_," Opal said, with a conspiratorial grin and a giggle. "Maia, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"I have no idea, yet," Maia said honestly.

"I think you should write stories," Opal said dreamily, yawning, as she lounged against the pillows. "I'll ask Daddy and Uncle Padfoot to read them to me every day at bedtime."

"Even when _you're_ grown up?" Maia smiled.

"No; I'll read them to my babies then," Opal sighed gently. Maia glanced at Opal, her heart slipping; Remus had told her that very few of his kind had children. Who wanted to pass on their condition to innocent little children? In twenty years, Maia wondered whether Opal would be able to bring herself to condemn her own children to a lifetime of monthly torture. It made her incredibly sad to think this sweet, playful little girl would grow up without so much.

"Are you going to have babies, then?" Maia asked.

"I think I'll adopt them," Opal said, and Maia raised her eyebrows, chuckling.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. Uncle Padfoot said when he ran away from his horrible parents, Harry Potter's Granddad and Nanny adopted him as a son," Opal said, sighing gently. "I'd like a son as dreamy as Uncle Padfoot." Maia almost shot tea through her nose, choking with laughter.

"There's a wonderful Greek tragedy just perfect for you, Opie," she smirked, then grinned at the little girl. Finishing her tea, she sighed. "Are you going to come downstairs with me?"

"Yes!" Opal chirped, shuffling off the bed. Maia paused to make her bed, then followed Opal downstairs, bearing her teacup, several empty plates, the ramekin from the chocolate-mousse she and George had snuck last night.

"Good morning," Remus said, smiling as he glanced up from some early-morning correspondence; it wasn't unusual for the adults in the house to be up unusually early, even if they didn't have to get to work, like Mr Weasley did. Remus now kept 'office-hours'.

"Morning," Maia smiled.

"Oh, looks like someone fell asleep in her clothes again," Sirius remarked, watching her idly as Opal hopped straight for Sirius' lap, her favourite perch besides cuddling with her Daddy.

"Mm," Maia yawned, pouring herself another cup of tea. "You're up early."

"Ailith just got off duty," Sirius said, hoisting Opal into his lap, where she settled comfortably, sucking her thumb, and Remus shot him a careful glance, as Maia smirked at Sirius. Every time Sirius and Ailith met, Maia noticed they seemed more and more intimate. Not mad-dogging each other across the coq-au-vin, snogging at every opportunity, but they seemed emotionally _close_.

"Duty doing what?" someone asked, and the twins dropped downstairs, already freshly-showered and dressed.

"Minding her own business, that's what," Sirius said, giving the twins a look. George glanced over at Maia as she set down two more teacups, and as he sat down, he smiled.

"Morning," he said, and Maia smiled as she leaned around him to give him his tea, brushing a hand lightly across the breadth of his broad shoulders, and he smiled up at her.

"Morning," she said softly. A soft tap on the window had everyone glancing up, and, as it had become routine in the last week, they were unsurprised to see a flock of owls waiting to be admitted so they could drop off their deliveries. Taking several bronze Knuts from the red flowerpot on the windowsill, Maia paid the _Daily Prophet_ owl, the first owl to swoop into the kitchen, and Opal watched delightedly as George helped her rid the other owls of their post, one by one swooping back out of the window. As it had since _Radio Rock_'s first historic broadcast, most of the post was now for Sirius, under the guise of the Fugitive, or Jack or Vittorio; all _Radio Rock_ fan-mail ended up at Grimmauld Place, to the amusement of its residents, especially the teenaged ones who had made it their responsibility to write replies.

But today, along with the usual song-requests, personal stories and letters from hopeful sponsors and bands looking to promote their latest record, there were several letters for Remus; one for Fred and George each; one for Mr Weasley and Jules apiece from their respective offices; one for Cedric; and _four_ for Maia. One was a reply from the Wizard carpenter she had chatted with several times and sat down in the Leaky Cauldron for a drink to discuss designs for the casing of her pocket-wireless; the second was a reminder from _Madam Primpernelle's_ about the date of the first of her six cosmetics-making classes; the third was a wonderfully fat envelope from Hermione, and the fourth, the largest and heaviest delivery, was from her aunt's Herbologist friend in Jerusalem.

Writing in Hebrew, his first language, he had replied to Maia's letter, full of jubilation that she was finally studying magic, and in a place with greenhouses as celebrated as those at Hogwarts, he had enclosed a copy of his book that Maia had had so much difficulty sourcing.

"Huh," she said softly, rereading the letter, because her Hebrew wasn't as squeaky-clean as it should be, with all Aunt Diane's tutoring.

"What is it?" Sirius asked, as Neville, who came downstairs in a t-shirt and his grass-stained jeans, ready to have a big breakfast before going off to the _Three_ _Broomsticks_ for their day-long lesson with Professor Sprout in the greenhouses, peered at the book and picked it up off the table, examining the exquisite illustrations, and the, to everyone else, unreadable language it was written in.

"It's, um…my aunt's friend, in Jerusalem, he's a famous Herbologist in the Middle-East…but his publisher is still in the process of translating his books into English," Maia said, glancing up from the letter. "So he sent me a copy in Hebrew."

"_You_ know Hebrew?" Jules asked, eyebrows raised.

"He said my Hebrew was exceptional when we last met," Maia said sadly. Glancing at Jules, then her uncle, she said, "Diane taught me everything I know about languages. French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, even a little Japanese." Diane had raised Maia multilingual, knowing through personal experience how priceless the gift of language could be. Diane had spent most of her life writing biographies and translating them herself into different languages, and she had wanted as many doors open for Maia as possible.

Neville, who had taken the book from her, was going through the illustrations while he ate his breakfast: Maia had put together a basket picnic for herself, Neville and Professor Sprout last night, ready to go, and on Fridays, Kreacher was in charge of doing a full English breakfast, mostly because Maia had to get to the Leaky Cauldron early with Neville. "I'd love a copy of this when it's available in English. There's some very rare plants in here."

"They're all in his gardens," Maia said, tucking into her breakfast. "In Jerusalem—they're famed in that part of the world, people from all over visit to tour the gardens; he hosts competitions there, too. I was lucky enough to visit in time to see one of the garden-shows. The displays were absolutely fantastic."

"Who are the other letters from?" Sirius asked, glancing over as he went through his fan-mail.

"Oh, this one's from that carpenter, this is from Madam Primpernelle's about those classes, and…this one's from Hermione," Maia said. Hermione's letters never disappointed; they were always packed with substance and it was best to have the time to sink one's teeth into them rather than skim through them at breakfast, so she would save it for later. Noticing that Remus was looking unusually happy, she asked, "Who's your post from, Remus?"

"I've just heard back from one of my oldest contacts," he said, glancing up; a smile was illuminating his young features.

"Is that the professor you told me about?" Maia asked curiously. "Who was bitten during the War?"

Nodding, Remus said, "Professor Dumbledore asked him to stay at Hogwarts, but…he couldn't bear the thought of putting children at risk." He cast Opal a warm smile, sitting cuddled in 'Uncle Padfoot's' lap.

"And now?" Maia asked.

"He was a marvellous teacher; he's the man I most hoped to emulate as an adult, when I was your age," Remus smiled. "He was only my teacher for a year, but…now, I think he's itching to make a difference again."

"He's agreed to be involved with the were-baby school?" Maia asked excitedly, and Jules and Remus chuckled. Her referencing Opal as the 'were-girl' and all werewolf children as 'were-babies' made them laugh.

"Well, we're going to meet at the Leaky Cauldron, hopefully we can iron out some details," Remus smiled.

"Have you had any luck with Ministry funding for the school?" Jules asked.

"We've got a few people interested," Remus said. "It helps having Amos onboard…"

"And you went to school with a lot of the people now holding high positions in that Department," Sirius added, glancing up from a letter.

"Yes, and most of them still haven't recovered from their shock from discovering that I'm a werewolf," Remus said drily. "That I _was_ a werewolf, all throughout our time at Hogwarts."

"That's because everybody always thought you were the quiet, good-natured, studious, well-behaved one," Sirius smirked.

"Well, I suppose that next to you, I did appear to be quite well house-trained," Remus smirked subtly, eyes twinkling.

"Mm, but it's always the quiet ones," Sirius grinned. "The stories I could tell about you—"

"Don't," Remus said, glancing at Sirius, who gave him a wolfish grin. "Sirius, _don't_—"

"I could tell you about the party after the Gryffindor-Slytherin game in our fifth year," Sirius said, smirking, and Remus shifted, giving his oldest friend a look. "Or about re-labelling all of Madam Pomfrey's potions… Or pilfering Professor Slughorn's stash of mead. Or the protest against the new school-uniform rules during sixth-year."

"You were a conscientious objector, _Professor_?" George smirked.

"Not only that, he encouraged others to be likewise," Sirius smirked. "He was a prefect after all. Had to set an example. In protest of the new uniform rules, we spent an entire _month_ wearing nothing but the new Gryffindor tie."

"Suddenly we found ourselves highly popular with the ladies," Remus said, a grin sparkling across his face. The twins rocked with laughter, and Neville was grinning.

"And, it was _you_, my dear _prefect_ Moony, who figured out the three ways in and four ways _out_ of the girls' dormitories without setting off the security features that prevented boys from getting upstairs," Sirius said, and Remus didn't even bother to hide his grin as the twins clamoured for information. "And that was all thanks to _Violet_."

Remus paused, shivering, his eyes widening as a delighted, mischievous smile flickered across his face, though he tried to hide it.

"Who was Violet?" Maia asked curiously, unable to hold back a smile at the expression on Remus' face, trying to hold back laughter, his eyes glittering with suppressed mirth at memories the name brought back.

"_Violet_ was…" Sirius grinned, shaking his head. "If James and I were the height of cool when we were at Hogwarts, Violet and your mum were our female counterparts. And Violet _loved_ shy, well-behaved Remus."

"You mean she loved _corrupting_ shy, well-behaved Remus," Remus smirked.

"We'd been trying to corrupt you for years before Violet took a fancy to you," Sirius pointed out.

"Well, you didn't have the same charms and wiles that Violet employed," Remus smirked, and Sirius threw his head back and gave his deep, bark-like laugh.

"Was she your girlfriend?" Maia asked curiously, and Remus' eyes sparkled as he nodded.

"What's she up to these days?" Sirius asked curiously.

"She's president of the Quidditch League," Remus said, and Sirius chuckled, "and she's got three children—all of them daughters."

"Of course," Sirius laughed richly. "She'd be wasted on sons."

"I don't know, any sons of hers would probably be protégés of Fred and George," Remus said. Glancing at the, Remus smirked, "Violet had a particular affinity for slipping _love-potions_ into people's food and drink. Remember, Padfoot?"

"I'd been suppressing that," Sirius said, silvery-grey eyes widening. The twins giggled themselves silly at Remus telling them the story of Violet slipping Sirius a love-potion, in which the hair of a Care of Magical Creatures class hippogriff had been placed.

"So what's going on with the school-funding?" Jules prompted, getting them back to their original conversation once they had all stopped hiccoughing and wiped their faces, and Maia glanced up from her plate, interested; she liked to keep track of the progress Remus was making with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

"Well, at the moment, with all Umbridge's obstructions," Remus sighed, "there's been very little progress."

"Just do it anyway," Sirius said, frowning.

"I want to," Remus sighed. "But with Umbridge in full-force at the Ministry, anything we do now could be put to a halt, and you can bet she'd try to force more laws through the Wizengamot, preventing us from doing anything of the sort again."

"I thought Amos was helping with that," Jules frowned. "Overturning Umbridge's new laws."

"Oh, he is," Remus sighed. "But it'll take time, and unless we can somehow get rid of Umbridge, the Wizengamot is still going to be dominated by people in Fudge's pocket or who are just as prejudiced as he and Umbridge are."

"I told you, I've got thirteen counts of murder that need filling up," Sirius said, playing with Opal's ringleted hair. "I'd be happy to sort out Umbridge for you."

"We're still holding out hope that your name can be cleared, Padfoot," Remus said, giving his oldest friend a tired smile, "I won't have you giving the Ministry cause to put you on trial for murder for _real_."

"People like Umbridge always get what they deserve," Jules said, rather savagely, frowning over at Opal, and Maia wondered if he was thinking what his little girl's life would be like when she grew up if Umbridge was allowed to continue her tyranny over the minorities. "Well, I'd better get off to work. Opal, you be a good girl for Sirius, alright?"

"I always am! It's Uncle Padfoot who's naughty. Mrs Weasley tells him off for letting off fireworks and Stinkpellets and stealing cakes," Opal chirped indignantly, turning her face to her father so he could give her a kiss before picking up his briefcase and making his way upstairs and out of the house. The rest of the working adults followed suit, picking up briefcases, tugging on freshly-ironed robes; slinging Opal over his shoulder, Sirius made his way up to the den to get ready to broadcast later in the afternoon, and the twins Apparated up to the attic. They had been murmuring quietly amongst themselves about how they could convince Remus to divulge his information on accessing the Gryffindor girls' dormitories, something that Maia knew, from reading _Hogwarts: A History_, was made almost impossible by the Founders.

Left alone with just Neville and Remus—Neville went upstairs quickly to put together his bag for their lesson—Maia flicked her wand at the plates and cups and glasses on the table, which all floated over to the sink and started washing themselves, and sat down at the table, wondering how best to phrase what she wanted to propose to Remus. "Remus?"

"Mm?"

"How…how many werewolf families, do you know, would you say are…supported by someone else?" Maia asked. "Like how Christian supports his parents?"

"Those who have unaffected family-members can sometimes be fortunate enough to have financial support," Remus said. "But, on the other hand, family-members sometimes completely turn their backs on those who have received the bite."

"Even though it's not their fault?" Maia asked. "I can't imagine anybody would _want_ to get bitten."

"No," Remus agreed, shaking his head. He sighed, "But the prejudice against our kind is pervasive, and very old. Especially before the Wolfsbane Potion, it was incredibly unsafe to be around anyone who was affected, even if magic was used."

"So there are… Are there families who have no money?" Maia asked, hating the idea of complete poverty for families, with _children_.

"There are some who have nothing," Remus said sombrely, nodding.

"Because I've been…thinking, well, even second-hand spell-books can be expensive," Maia said, sighing softly. "And I've been doing some research, with Flourish and Blotts, and the apothecaries in Diagon Alley, the stationery shop. And I even asked Professor Snape whether he knew any highly-qualified potioneers who would be able to make the Wolfsbane Potion for large numbers. I'm trying to work out how much it would cost to sponsor an individual werewolf to go to school at the Hogwarts level, you know, taking their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s. And it's the same, no matter where I go; the more I were to buy, the cheaper the cost would be. Fully kitting out a dozen kids to go to school would cost less than sponsoring _two_. I was…thinking perhaps I could sponsor whoever you can convince to go to that school. And maybe set up grants to buy wands with Ollivander, when they come to Hogwarts age."

"Maia, you do more than enough already," Remus said gently, giving her the kind of look that was so patented _Remus_, that kind, thoughtful, surprised-to-be-liked and pleased and proud that she was so thoughtful and generous look. "More than anybody's ever offered before."

Maia sighed heavily, chin resting on her hand. "I have all that money in the de Lusignan vault, Remus," she said glumly. She hated having all that money, when Remus was forced to accept new robes from Sirius as a gift, unable to afford new ones himself. "I _hate_ having all that money. It's just lying there; I can't not use it to help make someone's lives a little better."

"That money has to last you, Maia," Remus said. "That's for your family, your children, in the future."

"Some things are worth more than any amount of gold," Maia replied quietly. She would give away all of the contents of that vault if it could bring back her aunt, her mother, her father, the uncle and aunts she had never known, her grandparents. "And I'm not prevented from going out and earning a wage if I find my funds depleting. If I have to spend a little money to help ensure other people can go out and earn some, it's money well spent." Remus smiled softly.

"I'll keep it in mind," he said. Checking his pocket-watch, he said, "You and Neville should get going soon, Pomona will be waiting for you."

"Yep," Maia nodded, checking her own watch. "I'll see you later. Will you be home late?"

"I hope not," Remus sighed. "I don't think I've worked harder in the last four weeks than in the last four years."

"Welcome to the grind," Maia smiled, and Remus chuckled.

"Have a good lesson," he said, and Maia made her way upstairs, found Neville, retrieved her bag, and the picnic lunch she had put together, and together they approached the fireplace in the dining-room, the only one large enough and clean enough to accommodate for Floo travel; the kitchen fireplace was governed by the enormous range, and the drawing-room had yet to be approached for cleaning.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review! This may or may not be the last update for a few weeks, because I'm going on holiday on Saturday, so if you want another update before I go, you'll have to treat me to a good few hearty, lengthy reviews! I'll be hand-writing everything while I'm away (without access to the internet—_eek_!) so I'll blitz updates when I get back, but please leave me a few treats in my Inbox for when I get back!


	22. Chapter 22

**A.N.**: This is for _Marlicat,_ who has the flu! Short note, because I'm off to Spain!

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_22_

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><p>At the end of the day—having spent most of it bent double, doing hard manual labour digging, pruning, harvesting and planting—an exhausted pair of teenagers dawdled toward Hogsmeade, their shoulders and the backs of their necks badly sunburned, their clothes sweaty, their fingernails caked with fertiliser. They stopped only long enough to visit <em>Zonko's<em> joke-shop—Fred and George, knowing their products had to be highly unique or else surpass other products available on the joke-item market, had asked Maia to pick up a list of things from _Zonko's_ against which they could measure their products' effectiveness.

It was with relief that Maia sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching it fill with fragrant bubbles from a small bath-bomb she had found in the little woven basket of bathroom products that Ailith had given her, a wonderfully floral bubble-bath, a new flannel, a tub of moisturising body-butter. Climbing into the bath, she groaned at the hot water scalding her already burning skin, that pleasure-pain that felt so good after working hard all day. Keeping her hair bound in a handkerchief, she slipped into the bath.

Enjoying the hot water, the _clean_, Maia sighed, closing her eyes, and relaxed.

It was a few moments before she got the feeling that something was…_off_. The bubbles were heavier…_wriggling_. Cold. She opened her eyes. And let out an almighty, hair-raising _scream_.

The bubbles weren't bubbles at all, anymore.

They were _maggots_.

A bathtub full of little white glistening, wriggling, slimy _maggots_.

Screaming, she jumped out of the bath as if she had received an electric-shock. Blindly, she grabbed for her wand, using a nonverbal _Scourgify_ to rid her body of remnant maggots, and as she straightened up, shuddering and fighting the urge to vomit with disgust, a deadly _calm_ set in.

"Them." She calmed down, filled with a quiet, dangerous sort of anger that preceded the storms she was famed for at school, the prefect with the incredibly long fuse but who exploded like Mount Doom after the Ring was melted. "_Them_," she growled. The _twins_. "_Kill_."

Wrapping her colourful dressing-gown around her, she flung open the bathroom-door, wand in hand, going over all the curses she had learned, ready to do some serious damage.

Out in the corridor, she almost tripped over Sirius, who sat cross-legged, grinning from ear to ear, wearing his tattered blue headphones, and carrying his broadcasting microphone. Doubled over, clinging to themselves, faces shining with tears, were the twins. Ginny and Opal lingered, grinning.

"_And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the sound of Niecey realising the bath-bomb we snuck into a basket of perfectly harmless bath-products was actually a new creation from _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes!" Sirius exclaimed delightedly, his wolfish grin only serving to further perpetuate Maia's killing-rage. "'Bath Bombs'; _just add to water, the foam will transfigure into a layer of creepy-crawlies of your choice! Available in maggots, spiders and worms! Seven sickles apiece—ah! Shrieking Beauty has emerged! Enjoy your bath, Niecey_?"

"You—You… _Death_," Maia growled, glaring at the twins. "Hurt. _Slow_."

"_I take it you didn't appreciate the extra features we added to your bubble-bath_?" Sirius said sombrely, as Fred giggled uncontrollably, George hiccoughing.

"It was _fun_ for everyone when you were doing it to Cedric!" Maia shouted, exploding, and the twins giggled as they wiped their faces and clambered off the floor, out of reach as she dived for them. "But now… Now you must be destroyed."

"_A shout-out to all those who think it wise to poke an exhausted teenager_," Sirius chuckled, still broadcasting everything live. "_Leave maggots and wands out of the equation_." Maia shot several jinxes at Fred and George, who dodged and ducked, using a bemused, wide-eyed Opal as a shield.

"It's so nice when it's not happening to me," Ginny choked, hands on her knees because she was laughing so much. Maia shot her wand over her shoulder at her bath, and the next thing Ginny knew, a great cloud of maggoty foam was dumped over her head. Sirius' commentary was broken by Ginny's scream, and a tea-tray had to be used as a shield by Sirius to avoid being spattered as Ginny shook her head like a dog to rid her mane of red hair of the maggots. "Get them off! Get them off ME _NOW_!"

"_Nice Levitation Charm_!" Sirius laughed, setting up a safe periphery of Shield Charms around himself while Fred and George dodged Maia's hexes.

"You forgot, Padfoot's been teaching me Defence!" Maia growled, darting out of the way of a violently-pink hex. Concentrating, she grinned, flicking her wand the way her books dictated. The twins both looked for a moment as if they were concentrating very hard. Nothing happened.

"No!" Fred gasped.

"Anti-Disapparation Jinx!" George grimaced, looking appalled. "Not fair!"

"Leg it." Fred dove out from behind Sirius, throwing himself down the corridor past a giggling Opal hiding under an occasional-table, and George pelted after him. Maia laughed, suddenly not angry or disgusted anymore, because this was _fun_. Concentrating again, she utilised her nonverbal tutoring from Sirius, and the book she had picked up in _Flourish and Blotts_ her first day in Diagon Alley.

"_And that's a Jelly-Legs Curse for Fred, very nice execution, Niecey_!" Sirius commentated, while _The Supremes_ played in the background. "_You've been practicing your Nonverbal Spells. Ouch, and George has just slipped over in the maggoty water Niecey levitated from the bathroom onto Ginny—you alright, mate_?"

"Nothing wounded but my pride—_Protego_!" George blurted, as he realised Maia was bearing down on him.

"_Too late_!" Sirius barked a laugh.

"What's that?" Ginny grinned, Sirius having used _Scourgify_ to rid the younger girl of her unwanted hair accessories.

"Bat-Bogey Hex," Maia said, grinning, as she wrinkled her nose and laughed at the side-effects. "_Curses and Counter-Curses _by Vindictus Viridian."

"_Anteoculatia_!" Fred shouted from the other end of the corridor.

"Ante-_what_?" Maia blurted, laughing, and shot, "_Tallantallegra_!" down the corridor, missing Fred by inches as he danced out of the way. George was rolling around on the floor, perhaps yelling for help, maybe screaming with disgust, scrabbling around for his dropped wand.

"_Rictusempra_!" Fred shouted gleefully. Maia dodged, grinning, but she could suddenly hear the most delicious giggles coming from _Opal_, who had been hit by the Tickling Jinx. Fred was distracted long enough, watching Opal with an expression of utmost hilarity, that Maia shouted, "_Petrificus_ _Totalus_!" and Fred froze, falling with a loud _bang_ to the floor.

"_Try _Levicorpus," Sirius called, and Maia glanced around, because George was still searching for his wand, Opal's delicious giggles were ringing around the corridor, and George was still fighting the giant bat-shaped bogeys flapping all over his face.

"What does that do?" she asked curiously.

"_Have a try_," Sirius grinned, still broadcasting. Deciding on George, the nearer of the two twins, Maia used her nonverbal magic again, pleased with how well she was doing with it after Sirius had only introduced her a fortnight ago, she laughed as suddenly George found himself hoisted into mid-air by the ankle.

"Cool!" Ginny laughed, her face shining with amusement.

"What in MERLIN'S NAME is going on up here?!" The shriek made Maia and Sirius jump so violently, the microphone clattered to the floor and Maia's wand went flying, shooting a stream of golden sparks before hitting the wall with a collision like firecrackers.

"_It was Opal's idea_!" Sirius shouted suddenly, all innocent, wide eyes and a barely-suppressed grin.

"It wasn't!" Opal managed to shriek around another bout of giggles.

"You are supposed to be the adult around here; you're supposed to stop them duelling each other if you refuse to take Maia's wand from her!" Mrs Weasley bellowed at Sirius.

"_Oh, I'm sure this is nothing compared to what they've all endured at school_," Sirius said idly, grinning from within the safety of his Shield Charm circle.

"That is not the point!" Mrs Weasley fumed. Maia didn't know when Mrs Weasley had gotten home; she looked tearstained and pale, but a rising line of red, always a sign of danger, was colouring her face.

"_Look, they've all got all of their limbs, haven't they, their appendages, their toes and ears? They're not bleeding, or brain-dead. They're fine_," Sirius said into the microphone. "_If you want them to go into the Ministry, they'll need to know a few good counter-jinxes. Especially under the present Cabinet_," he added darkly.

"You're supposed to be _me_ when I'm not here," Mrs Weasley shouted.

"_Why on earth would I want to do that_?" Sirius stared at her, appalled. "_They're having _fun_. They're being kids; leave them to it, _Merlin!" he sighed, shaking his head.

"I'll be the judge of how my children behave, thank you."

"_And I'll be the judge of how Niecey reacts to how your children behave, _thank you," Sirius retorted tartly, frowning. "_Someone lift that Tickling Jinx from Opal, she'll stop breathing_." Maia thought, _Finite Incantatem_, flicking her wand, and Opal collapsed against the rug, panting, her face shining with tears of mirth.

"What's the counter-jinx to _Levicorpus_?" she asked.

"_Um… I'll have to ask Moony_," Sirius frowned thoughtfully. George made a noise that might have been despairing. "_Oh, no! _Liberacorpus!" He flicked his wand at George, who fell with a _bang_ to the floor. "_Oops, sorry. Should've cushioned the landing, sorry, George_."

"And I'll get those bogeys off," Maia grimaced, grinning, flicking her wand.

"That's a really good spell," Ginny beamed.

"_I can't believe how quickly you're coming along with your Defence work, Niecey, I'm very proud of you_," Sirius said, groaning as he climbed off the floor, removing his Shield Charms. "_Perhaps I should teach you to duel_."

"Cool, can we sit in?" George asked, patting his face to make sure all evidence of the Bat-Bogeys was gone.

"Yeah, Hogwarts had a Duelling Club once—" Fred interjected, climbing off the floor once his mother had released him from the Full Body-Bind Curse.

"For one night—"

"When that _dip_ Lockhart was professor of Defence."

"What an idiot," George added flatly.

"It was very unfortunate, what happened to him," Mrs Weasley admonished, still flushed, glowering at Sirius as he made his way, Opal clinging to his hand, down toward the den, no longer broadcasting a practical demonstration of one of the twins' products and the immediate aftermath.

"You wouldn't be saying that if he'd actually managed to get _Ron_ with that charm," Fred pointed out.

"_Bet the boys could've used a few good counter-jinxes then_…" Sirius said over his shoulder lightly, and Mrs Weasley looked like she very dearly wished she could hex him and get away with it.

"Are you alright, Mum?" Ginny asked, frowning at Mrs Weasley. Looking suddenly very tired, and very sad, Mrs Weasley sighed; she looked, for the first time since her children had moved to Grimmauld Place and tried her every nerve, like she didn't have the energy to scold anyone about the amateur duel, the mess on the floor, Sirius' radio broadcast flaunting his fugitive lifestyle, encouraging her children to go mad, make a mess, hex each other.

"Yes, I'm alright," Mrs Weasley said unconvincingly. "I'm just going to go and have a lie down before the meeting." And, without scolding anyone further about the mess or the duel, Mrs Weasley made her way upstairs to her and Mr Weasley's bedroom. Ginny frowned concernedly, watching her mother go.

"D'you think she went to try and talk to Percy again?" she wondered softly, glancing uncertainly at Maia. Maia frowned, wondering what the time was; surely Percy would have been at his office until only a little while ago?

"She might've done," Maia said quietly. "Maybe she thought she could get him on his way home from work." They all knew that Percy now rented his own little flat here in London; a few days ago, Mrs Weasley had gone to see him, try to talk to him. Percy had slammed the door in her face. Any time Percy was mentioned, Mrs Weasley would start crying, and Mr Weasley would break whatever he was holding.

"Maybe we should let the twins off the leash and have their way with Percy," Ginny said sadly. "They'd force him to buck his ideas up. Or at least apologise to Mum. She doesn't deserve it."

"No," Maia agreed. "Nor does your dad." Ginny sighed.

"I'll leave you to have a _proper_ bath," she said, giving Maia a small smile, and Maia gave her a look that made Ginny laugh as she meandered over to the gallery, dropping downstairs to the den. Using _Scourgify_ to clean up the maggots, Vanishing the contents of the bathtub and using the _Scourgify_ charm again to clean the bath, Maia refilled it with hot water and a bit of her favourite perfume to scent the water, rather than using bubbles, and sank into the water. She tugged out Hermione's letter, lay back and read while she soaked.

Hermione's three-page-long manuscript of a reply was full of enthusiasm about Maia's ideas, all eagerness to help Maia's fundraising endeavours despite not knowing how to sew, knit, paint or cook. Having sent Hermione a proposed edit of her manifesto for S.P.E.W., Hermione had in turn edited Maia's, and they were coming to common ground over the practicality of the short-term aims of S.P.E.W., prioritising long-term goals. Hermione had included, not only a thrilled account of her visit to the Wizard community in the part of France she and her parents were staying—Maia had visited there before, with Diane, and so had advised Hermione how to get to the magically-protected neighbourhood—but also her own submissions to _The Talon_.

As Harry had said, there was no middle-ground with Hermione. She threw herself into her projects, as evidenced by the _three_ submissions Hermione had sent.

The last part of Hermione's letter was purely practical: she wanted to know how she could get to Headquarters from Waterloo Station, which she would be taking the train to from her own town, the day after she and her parents returned from France using the Channel Tunnel. The other worry was of course her Hogwarts trunk; Maia had stubbed her toes on Cedric's and the twins' trunks enough times that she knew how solid and heavy they were; on the train, especially into London, Hermione wouldn't earn many popularity points. Hermione had worked out exactly which train she was going to get, her parents having used the internet to buy her ticket in advance, and had worked out when she would arrive in Waterloo if there weren't any delays. She just didn't know where she was going from there.

Climbing out of the bath, careful not to get Hermione's _Talon_ submissions wet, Maia towelled off, got dressed, and kept her hair piled on her head for coolness, taking her handkerchief off, before gathering her things, and making her way to her room. Thinking of Hermione, she realised she was right; there was a schematic error in the plans to get her to Headquarters.

And Maia, who knew the hazards of upsetting a London-bound train full of people, set Hermione's _Talon_ submissions down on her desk next to the almost-completed newspaper, a tiny purple beaded bag, a hand-me-down from Tonks, catching her eye.

Smiling, she took the bag, picked up her diamond-weave basket, her _Advanced_ _Transfiguration_ textbook, another hand-me-down from Tonks, and made her way downstairs, a handful of her stationery tucked into the basket with her favourite stylus, a bottle of ink and her seal and wax-stick.

"All rinsed off?" Sirius asked, grinning from inside the studio; mid-song, he had the microphone turned off and poked his head around the door. Maia gave him a look as she draped herself in the doorway.

"I just finished reading Hermione's letter," she said. "She's worried how she'll get here from Waterloo."

"Oh, is she taking the train?" Sirius asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

"She didn't want to have to put anybody out, just to come and collect her," Maia shrugged delicately. "Anyway, I thought maybe I could go and meet her."

"You?"

"Well, that class at Madam Primpernelle's ends at five, Hermione's looking to get to Waterloo for about twenty-past," Maia said.

"There's just the issue of Professor Dumbledore divulging the Headquarter's whereabouts," Sirius said thoughtfully.

"I thought a person could be forced to see a building placed under the Fidelius Charm. If they're Apparated straight into it, or something…"

"Only if Apparated by the Secret-Keeper," Sirius said, and Maia nodded.

"Well, I'm going to send this to Hermione tonight," she said, indicating the little beaded purple bag. "I'm going to put one of those Undetectable Extending Charms on it, so she doesn't have to lug her trunk all the way across the country." Sirius gave her a look, like he was pleased and rather reminded of himself by how well she could perform incredibly complex spells, like the Undetectable Extending Charm, which Mad-Eye had mentioned to Maia early on. "Maybe you could ask Professor Dumbledore about Hermione during the meeting?"

"I'll do that," Sirius nodded, tucking his headphones on properly, and Maia fell silent so he could comment on the song, before putting another on, switching the already-used record for a fresh one. Tugging his headphones off one ear, Sirius said, "Couldn't bring us a brew, could you?"

"Just tea?" Maia asked.

"Yeah, I'll save the elf-made wine for the meeting," Sirius yawned. "It's going to be a late one." He shot her a sparkling-eyed mischievous glance. "So you kids will have a lot of fun off by yourselves."

"Maybe we will, maybe we won't," Maia smiled. Sirius smiled, reaching for something on his desk, and he handed her a small, thick piece of parchment, four inches by five, a _crossword_, neatly inked, with a list of cues, and decorated with tiny watercolours of Snitches, a Sphinx and a Hungarian Horntail dragon.

"My contribution," he smiled, eyes twinkling. "Oh, and you might have Opal to watch over tonight. Kreacher's on duty."

Having eavesdropped on their early meetings anyway, Kreacher had been invited to join the Order, put to good use using his own brand of magic where wizards would encounter difficulties. The house now pristine, except for the drawing-room and a few storage-rooms on the seventh-floor, Kreacher was in charge not only of cooking Friday-morning breakfasts and helping Maia tidy up the kitchen after dinner, but he kept the floors swept, the owls fed and watered, and he also did secret work for the Order.

Kreacher was surprisingly good at keeping little Opal entertained, if the older 'kids' wanted to pursue activities that _didn't_ involve playing dress-up or tea-parties; on those rare occasions, Kreacher would keep the little girl happy. But if Kreacher was on duty overnight, that meant they would have to watch her during the meeting, to make sure she didn't wander off to an upstairs cupboard with a mind of its own, or go exploring in the glass-fronted cabinets in the drawing-room. If that meant Opal was to sit in on their _Talon_ meeting, so be it; she loved secrets, especially if they involved play.

The twins, who had sat up eagerly at the mention of 'on duty' from Sirius, relaxed back onto the sofa, disappointed; George motioned for Maia to come over, and, closing the studio door on Sirius, she said she'd be back in a minute, and went to put on a pot of tea for Sirius, bringing him up a plate of treats and a sandwich to go with it. Sitting back down in the den, the twins glanced around furtively, clocking the miniature glass Sneakoscope used to alert Mrs Weasley's approach, before opening their workbook.

"Remember those earphones Opal showed us?" George said, and Maia nodded; having been given her cousin's old iPod Nano, Opal had been thrilled to show it to 'Uncle Padfoot', who, along with Mr Weasley, was trying to figure out how to get it to work off magic. The twins had liked the little pink earphones Opal had sat listening to _Electric Light Orchestra_ with.

"You remember we told you that Hermione'd mentioned _bugs_," Fred said. "Listening devices, you know?"

"Spy-gear," Maia grinned.

"And our conversation the other day, about not knowing any more about what's going on with the Order," George murmured.

"We want to do a line of stuff to help kids _spy_," Fred grinned. "Not just charms, we exhausted them ages ago—"

"What charms?" Maia interrupted curiously.

"Oh, you know…_Muffliato_, that's always a good one," George said quietly. "Causes a buzzing in anybody's ears nearby, you can have whole conversations and they won't hear a thing."

"But what we want to do is make products that help kids eavesdrop, things like that," Fred said.

"We've already come up with Extendable Ears," George said, barely suppressing a grin if pride. "They still need a bit of tweaking, and we're having a spot of trouble with our supplier—"

"Nothing a few good cursed letters won't solve," Fred growled softly.

"But we also thought… Well…" George frowned, glancing at Fred, then tugged the nearest and newest of his and Fred's workbooks into his lap, flipping it open. "We loved the idea of _bugs_. Listening devices that can be planted anywhere, and are seemingly innocuous, but are voice-activated to record things using—you know those glass balls you got for Sirius in the studio? We thought, we know Mum'd never approve, but we reckon Dad would love to even just experiment and see how effective they are; we could plant them on those wizards you said Sirius let slip the Order are tracking."

"Try and catch people like Lucius Malfoy out on who they're meeting, what they're doing behind closed doors," Fred added.

"Maybe get one into that Umbridge's office," George said, with an uncharacteristically ugly look on his face.

"Remus wouldn't approve," Maia said gently. A fan of having fun, and being _liked_, Remus nevertheless knew where the line was, and what was worth crossing it for, but spying on a senior Ministry employee probably wouldn't be it.

"No, probably not," George sighed. "But I hope he gets something over Umbridge. Everything he's been through, he doesn't deserve the bad press she's giving werewolves."

"But I reckon Dad'd try it out," Fred said persistently. "If he thought he could put even one free Death Eater behind bars, he'd think it worth the risk, even if Mum would blow up if she ever figured out it was us who'd helped him do it."

"You'd have to test them first, though," Maia said, examining George's illustrations. There was a tiny bluebottle fly, a ladybird, a spider, a woodlouse and a moth, each illustrated, with scales written down neatly; George had also illustrated those glass recording-orbs she had bought for Sirius; detailed plans for how each 'bug' could be made; how the miniscule orb could fit into each design; and which spells and enchantments were to be used on each individual bug and a corresponding second, larger orb that the first would magically transmit its recordings to.

"We've figured that out already," Fred said, with a grin.

"See, since Mum's been really down lately, over You-Know-Who," George said, with another dark look, and Maia knew he meant Percy, not Voldemort, "I thought we could maybe use some of our personal profits to buy her something nice."

"I suggested flowers," Fred said heavily, shrugging.

"Not flowers, they just die," Maia said, surprising herself with her momentary lack of romantic sensibility.

"That's what I said," George said, stretching luxuriously. "I suggested jewellery."

"Jewellery?"

"Mum loves jewellery," George said, nodding.

"She has none of her own—"

"But she admires it on other witches."

"So we thought we'd buy her something nice. Not flashy, or too expensive, she'd get suspicious," Fred said, and Maia nodded. "But Dad never told her we'd lost all our savings to Ludo Bagman when we bet on the Quidditch World Cup, so she still thinks we've got about thirty-odd Galleons scraped together."

"With Percy being the world's biggest prat, I think she'd really appreciate us doing something nice like surprising her with a gift for no reason," George said, and Maia frowned, glancing at him. "You don't think so?"

"Oh, I absolutely think you treating your mum would be a very sweet thing to do," Maia said, sighing. "But if she were to find out it's only for the sake fo the shop, I think she'd be really upset."

"That's true," George said thoughtfully.

Maia said softly, glancing at George, "Why not put one in the dining-room?"

"Well, we were thinking of using Undetectable magic to conceal the connection between the listening device and the orb that records everything," Fred said.

"And they won't last long, a few months at the most, due to the nature of the spells," George added. "And with us using the dining-room every day, someone might notice a bug and clean it away."

"You wouldn't have to make up the bugs just yet," Maia said softly. "Just figure out how the orbs will work. You could attach it to the chandelier."

"Ooh, good one!" George grinned.

"Right above the dining-table… Shame we can't put cameras in," Fred said softly. "That _digital_ camcorder you showed us in the shop was really cool!"

"There's a man who has a stall in the market in Diagon Alley," Maia said, "he only sells cameras—maybe you could talk to him about something like a magical equivalent of a camcorder."

While the twins had a conference about their 'bugs', Maia started working on the little beaded bag, adjusting it for Hermione, while she looked over George's shoulder at his workbook. Sitting cross-legged next to the twins on the big leather sofa, they exchanged paint-brushes, styluses, sharing a glass of Butterbeer and some nibbles, working on their projects while Opal educated Ginny about the _Disney_ princesses, and telling her why Maia's illustrations were better. Opal's bedroom-walls were papered with copies of Maia's watercolours, and the _Little Mermaid_ quilt, hanging like a tapestry above Opal's bed, served almost as a nightlight, with the little seed-beads glittering and twinkling like tiny stars.

* * *

><p>The custom of putting on their 'Thinking Caps' for <em>Talon<em> meetings came about because Opal wanted to play 'tea-party' after their early dinner of Friday-night fish-and-chips, and, opening the Extended drawers of the open-fronted costume wardrobe, everyone had had a lot of fun, laughing their heads off, trying on the numerous antique hats in varying styles, all in eccentric colours and beautifully trimmed, piecing together costumes inspired by the new _Alice_ film for their tea-party.

The Hatter could only have dreamed to produce hats like they found in the dress-up wardrobe, especially some of the women's ones: there were poke-bonnets; plumed Marie-Antoinette straw beaver-hats; veiled 'Fontage' headdresses; a sumptuous black-plumed ruby-velvet Cavalier hat; pearl-trimmed black lace and damask French hoods; a gauzy Continental hennin made of embroidered silk and cloth-of-gold; a padded silk 'chaplet'; a floor-length veil of finest silk-gauze to be worn with a heavy gold circlet set with precious stones that Sirius had removed a curse from; porkpie-hats; straw boaters; bowler-hats; wide-brimmed bonnets trimmed with all manner of pretty things; top-hats of every height, fabric, colour and trim; beribboned Leghorn hats; Puritan hats; turbans of every fabric, decorated with jewels, flowers, tassels and feathers; and tri-corn hats of straw, velvet or leather; trilby hats; a leather bush-hat from Sirius' brief but passionate affair with _Indiana Jones_ films; and a colourful collection of berets that seemed to have been fashionable when Sirius and Regulus were little boys, one of which, Sirius' favourite, he had reclaimed, and sat with his feet up in the studio, the black beret perched just so on his dark curly hair.

So it was due to Opal that, decked out in full costume, they approached the little attic parlour, which had become unrecognisable. Using the discarded furniture from around the rest of the house, Maia had put together a room that was part exotic silk tent, part Victorian opium-den, part tea-room, the turquoise piano against the back wall under swags of tasselled, striped amethyst-ruby silk, a corkboard filled with photographs on top of it with a handful of mismatched candlestick-holders, an oil-lamp and pretty trinkets.

The long walls were painted with a combination of murals—the Doctor, Opal and Maia sitting with their legs dangling over the edge of the TARDIS, watching pods of star-whales drift by; pretty Snow White in the dwarves' glittering goldsmith workshop; the Twelve Dancing Princesses entering a glittering champagne-and-diamond ballroom; Eris, watching the Siege of Troy, munching saucily on her golden apple; Helena, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius in the fairy-forest outside Athens, preyed on by pearly-toothed Puck and his Love-in-Idleness—each painted directly onto the wall with an elaborately-painted 'frame', on a background Maia had painted after the scenery around the Hobbit-hole, the woods, the meadows, the little streams carving idly, swans drifting past, the bees humming busily, the breeze bringing the salty brine of the ocean with it… And it all _moved_. The subjects of the murals flitted in and out of their frames, changing size when they danced around the meadows, poking their heads into other paintings; she hadn't yet got them verbal, but as soon as Maia could work those spells, she would.

She was incredibly proud of this room, the walls painted entirely by her with the tumbling clouds and forget-me-not sky, the breeze-teased woods dotted with scarlet and fiery-orange foliage amongst the horse-chestnuts, silver birch and oaks, the lilac trees and roses and the vegetable-patch shining with pinpricks of colour from the tomato vines, the cherry-trees and the glittering, idle streams carving through the wildflower-specked meadows, the shimmering pond where swans floated gracefully.

In a fit of activity one night when she was upset and sleepless over thinking too much about _death_, and the futility of it all, she had come up here—sometimes startled by the minor explosions from the next room as the twins worked into the night—and started painting. This is what she had come up with, finishing at noon the next afternoon; she had fallen asleep on the sofa, shaken awake by George before Fred could use her as an involuntary test-subject.

Alongside the murals, the walls were papered with a lot of Maia's other paintings, and a collection of George's too; photographs were pinned to the walls (it was amazing just how many dozens of rolls of film Maia and Ailith had gone through in the last few weeks!), magazine cuttings, newspaper articles, posters and doodles, some of Opal's colouring-pages, a Quidditch calendar, a Gryffindor standard, a small Hufflepuff flag, and the hand-sewn, embroidered _Talon_ banner, pinned above the sideboard, between a mural of her favourite _Immortals After Dark_ Valkyrie (Nïx with her pet-bat Bertil; Lucia the Archer; Regin the Radiant; icy Kaderin; violet-eyed mathematician Holly; Carafina the Fair with her burning wings, all grinning their dainty fangs, wielding their weapons of choice with delightful menace) and a collection of photographs taken during their make-believe games with Opal: Indians and cowboys; _Doctor Who_ (Romans; Venetian vampires; and the made-up stories Maia had spun for Opal; visiting El Dorado; Weeping Angels and the Princes in the Tower; Bertie, Lilibet, Margaret Rose and the fire-serpent spawn in the Buckingham Palace wine-cellars; Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock); the Three Musketeers; their indoors water-fight (started by Sirius); Peter Pan and the Lost Boys playing pirates and Indians.

The ceiling was draped with sumptuous fabrics Maia had found in the storage-rooms, each piece stemming from an unusual black-glass chandelier she had found under the bed in one of the spare bedrooms; there were three mobiles dangling in the corner to the left of the windows with a wind-chime, and the right-hand corner featured the tiled heating-stove, complete with copper kettle.

The room was filled with an assortment of chairs—none of them matching: the bistro-chair she had repainted apple-green; a reupholstered deck-chair; a painted rocking-chair; a heavy Indonesian-style carved armchair; the second of two rocking-dragons; the red-trimmed sofa; a trunk with a padded and embroidered lid; a little pouff; a small, very dainty embroidered-silk chaise; a gorgeously luxurious _papasan_ chair covered with the softest, beaded cornflower-blue cotton with velvet and embroidered, tasselled cushions; and lastly, a tasselled sapphire, forget-me-not and silver hammock strung up in the far corner; Maia had brought up her armchair for the evening, too—and along the right-hand wall was a polished sideboard, on which were arranged a collection of antique coffee- and teapots Maia had found in the storage-rooms, arranged on old cake-stands; the chairs were all centred around a mirrored coffee-table, at one end of which were clustered other little tables; a Moroccan side-table, the top of which removed to reveal a little hidden compartment; the octagonal sewing-table Maia had relined. A double-sided Chinoiserie bookcase served as a combination of shelving for tins of tea, stacks of mismatched teacups amongst selections of books, cake-stands, and as a cache for trinkets and toys Maia had found around the house, as well as bundles of knitting, the odd old _Brownie_ and a turquoise _Polaroid_ camera, several pincushions, little vases filled with flowers collected from the Hobbit-hole, seashells from the beach, while the top was decorated with a dainty antique, hand-embroidered runner on which a collection of mismatched candlestick-holders, including a short, blown-glass one, were arranged, with an Egyptian scent lamp; a little silver bowl; a stunning _Fabergâ_-style mosaic-jewelled chicken-egg she had found, dusty and forgotten, in a corner, and which bore a miniature watercolour-portrait of a dark-haired, pretty-eyed boy she suspected was a very young Sirius; a crystal ball on a delicate gold stand; and an empty French glass jewellery casket; several pretty figurines; a decorative little gold birdcage and a chess-set made up of mismatched pieces. Beside the bookcase, on a very low table, was one of the dollhouses Maia had found in the storage-room, the only one she hadn't taken into the playroom. The innards had long ago been stripped, probably given to the other dollhouses, but she had conjured sparkling, twinkling golden bubbles, illuminating the insides.

The last thing she had brought into the room, earlier in the evening, was a little writing-desk, on which she had placed her magically-enhanced pink _Royal_ typewriter, which could change fonts, sizes, colours of ink, special-effects and formatting, and which she had used at Neville's request to clean up his atrocious handwriting for his _Talon_ submission.

"_Wow_!" Ginny blurted, eyes bursting wide, her freckled face glowing from the midst of a periwinkle-blue poke-bonnet trimmed in ribbon and lilac blossoms, her twin plaits vibrant against an embroidered grey damask tailcoat, vibrant sweet-coloured pointed beribboned stays another pop of colour that went atrociously with her hair.

"Oh my _god_!" Looking slightly thunderstruck, the others filed into the room; having seen it only _before_ Maia had gone at it unable to sleep and bursting with inspiration and a hopeless case of homesickness, the others hadn't known what awaited them in the attic.

The candles and lamps had been lit, and the coffee-table was spread with a selection of cake-stands, embossed tea-trays, a silver tea-strainer, a little crystal salt-cellar full of odd teaspoons, odd little plates that belonged nowhere else—a bluebell-petal saucer; a cherry-stamped side-plate; a bubbled glass cake-stand spun with gold; a silver sweet-bowl—full of desserts, including but not limited to Maia's petit-fours (including a mini _croquembouche_ she had made for one of her recipe-cards); several little cup-cakes; her flower-cookies; baklava; rum-balls; milk-bottles; Moroccan rose-shaped fried cookies; gingerbread; slices of cake; and Turkish tea-glasses filled with chocolate-mousse; some homemade marshmallows; the last poached Helen-pear with warm chocolate-cardamom sauce and candied raspberries from dinner last-night; a selection of sweets from the shop in Diagon Alley; and little decorated enamel bowls of white-cherries, dates, peaches, gorgeously sweet, juicy plums and whole strawberries, all but the dates harvested from Maia's orchards and garden at the Hobbit-hole.

"You've got sweeties!" Opal cried delightedly, striding into the room with Fred and George dutifully carrying her incredibly long, very fine silk-tulle veil, which she wore with a daisy-yellow 'zone-front' dress Maia had recreated from one of the costumes in Sofia Coppola's _Marie Antoinette _especially for her (one of a selection), and a midnight-blue silk, starlight-beaded _fez_. Maia had made the little hat especially for Opal, who would marry the Eleventh Doctor in a heartbeat. With a hot-pink feather-boa and a pair of handmade little ballet-slippers beaded and embellished with flowers on the toes, she glided over to the coffee-table, eyes wide with delight.

"You never do anything halfway," Cedric smiled, as he took the pipe out of his mouth, plucking the knees of his scarlet-velvet trousers, taking a seat on the green bistro chair—always the gentleman, forgoing the most comfortable of seats in case anybody else wanted them—a punch of colour coming from his sunflower-yellow ruffled silk shirt, tartan stock-tie and lilac corduroy pea-coat.

"What's the point of doing anything if you don't do it properly?" Maia wondered aloud, as Fred groaned, throwing himself down onto the papasan. If anyone was to throw themselves whole-heartedly into a project, it was Fred Weasley: in a striped acid-green ascot with a collection of different pins, a fuchsia velvet waistcoat, linen trousers, vibrant firework Wellies, a battered leather tri-corn hat and an Oriental-patterned satin dressing-gown, the addition of his little bong (borrowed from Sirius' collection in the den) completed his outfit of complete ludicrousness.

"I'll say," Fred said, as George sprawled languidly at one end of the red-trimmed sofa nearest his twin. "You should go into interior-decorating, Maia."

"I don't think so," Maia sighed. "Unless it's decorating a primary-school for werewolves." The twins chuckled, grinning; Ron, wearing a plum-velvet bowler-hat, a star-embroidered waistcoat, a bee-printed ascot and riding-boots, sat himself down, eyeing the coffee-table excitedly.

Neville, in a red waistcoat over a long, hooded tunic attempted the hammock and thought better of it: He sank into the deck-chair, hugging the _Beatles_-embroidered cushion Maia had pilfered from a raid of Sirius' old room, Trevor croaking happily on top of his leather bush-hat, and said happily, "I _like_ _it_ in here. I wish we could decorate the dormitories like this."

"You'd have people like Dean Thomas wanting to paint our dorm the West Ham colours," Ron said disapprovingly.

"Ew, West Ham football-team?" Maia grimaced. She didn't like sports in general, but despised football specifically.

"Yeah, exactly," Ron grimaced.

"Yeah, but if you had your way, you'd paper the walls with Chudley Cannons' merchandise," George smirked, lifting little Opal under the arms when she silently asked to be carried, and he carefully set her in the hammock, with Spike the Puffskein, her _Tale of Mrs Tiggywinkle_ book, and a fine paper-bag of old-fashioned Muggle rhubarb-and-custard sweets.

It was widely-known that the Chudley Cannons were the _worst_ team in the entire British Quidditch League. And Ron, a devout follower, was picked on because of his faith in their ability to get out of bottom of the league. Maia knew that Fred and George held a grudge against Hufflepuff team Seeker Cedric for a win against the Gryffindor team—_two years ago_: she also knew that Fred and George were two of Gryffindor's most brutal Beaters in Hogwarts' recent Quidditch history, and that the _famous_ Harry Potter had only lost one Quidditch match in his career as Gryffindor Seeker. It was during the very match that Fred and George wouldn't forgive Cedric for that Harry had succumbed to the Dementors' influence, falling off his broom and thus, losing the only match of his career.

"When did you do all this?" Ginny asked, peering at the paintings, the photographs, the collection of mismatched teacups on a mirrored tray.

"Couldn't sleep," Maia said softly, examining some of George's paintings of Order members, Opal, George himself and Fred, Ginny, Cedric and Neville, accurate studies of Crookshanks, Trevor and their growing collection of owls.

"Where did you find all this _stuff_?" George asked curiously, peering at the contents of the Chinoiserie bookcase. With an alarmed expression, he picked up the head of one of Maia's knitted mice; there was a line of them along one shelf of the bookcase; several foxes, a badger, an elephant, two mice, a wolf, several different rabbits (some with ears that flopped down, most with the standing ears that looked so sweet) a mole, several different bears, a pig and a cat. "Um… Mai… I know your relatives liked beheading their house-elves when they were too old to carry a tea-tray, um…but…do we have to have a _talk_?" He picked up one of the little Dutch bunny heads by the ear, letting it swing, and he turned wide eyes on her. Opal giggled.

"I just haven't finished the bodies yet!" Maia laughed, taking the head from him, setting it back on its spot on the bookshelf.

"How come you haven't done any weasels?" Fred asked, frowning at the display of knitted animal-heads.

"I'm still experimenting with which animals I can make," Maia said, tugging her bundle of knitting out of the pocket of her top waistcoat (she wore two; a violet-embroidered pink muslin one, under a chrysanthemum-patterned silk Oriental-style one, both belted at the waist with a thick brown-leather belt). "I'm still working out the pattern for a little hippo!"

"A _hippo_?"

"It's my Patronus form," Maia smiled.

"Georgie," Opal cooed, peering earnestly at her favourite of the twins. "Please can I have some sweeties?"

"You've already got those rhubarb-and-custards," George pointed out.

"They take too long to eat," Opal protested, wide-eyed.

"Help yourselves," Maia said. "I'll put on some tea. What does everybody want? Gunpowder Green, Fred?"

"Absolutely," Fred grinned.

"When everyone's got what they need, we can call the meeting to order," Maia smiled, and she handed out the mismatched plates so they could pick out pieces of baklava, sweets, cake, petit-fours and the little eight-petal cookies.

Teacups—a collection of mismatched cups: one a beautiful iridescent blue scalloped teacup; a plain white bone-china cup without handles; a very dainty gilt blue cup; a cobalt-and-gilt Moroccan tea-glass, and a gold-rimmed etched one; a sweet little fuchsia polka-dotted mug; a cherry-printed mug Maia had received for a birthday gift; an angular Chinoiserie teacup; a blue-handled teacup painted with dainty violets; the 'My Other Mug is a Shot-Glass' mug she had accidentally stolen from an ex-boyfriend's brother's flat; and a double-lined glass teacup—were set out on the Moroccan table, and numerous teapots—Maia's new glass one from the Diagon Alley glassworks; a colourful Chinoiserie teapot; a little silver Moroccan teapot—were brought out, tea-leaves and teabags divvied out amongst them, tea-granules put in a Turkish tea-glass, fresh mint popped into the Moroccan teapot with some green tea, and the tea was made to everyone's specifications. Gunpowder Green; rose; apple; Milky Oolong; Lady Grey; mint, everyone had their favourite, and as soon as everyone settled, Maia grinned, using a small gavel she had found in a box of clutter, and tapped it against the sideboard.

"I call to order the meeting of the first reading of _The Talon_," she said, rather pompously, because it felt like a grand occasion, and sometimes grand occasions demanded some level of pomp and circumstance. "Thank you all for your contributions."

"It was our pleasure," Cedric smiled.

"Yeah, I haven't had so much fun doing homework—_ever_," Fred grinned.

"It was good cerebral exercise, getting all our escapades in order," George agreed, grinning; he sat with a pipe that produced, not smoke, but golden and silver-champagne bubbles that smelled like Fizzing Whizbees (the twins' own invention).

"If at the very least for our memoirs," Fred nodded.

"Can't wait to read _those_," Cedric chuckled.

"Yeah," George grunted, as he propped curly-toed Arabian slippers on the coffee-table, a contrast to his tartan trousers. "You'd best be nice to us, Diggory, or you'll end up as nothing more than a funny little footnote on our epic arses."

"Have you still not forgiven me for that Quidditch match?" Cedric asked, sighing as he shook his head. "I tried to call a rematch!"

"It's the principal of the matter, Diggory," Fred said, shaking his head solemnly, as Maia chuckled and sipped her tea. "You _beat us_."

"Not that they hold a grudge," Maia said, and Cedric smiled as he sipped his tea.

"Come on, let's see the _Talon_," Ginny spoke up. "I want to see how it all looks, everything put together."

"Well, all but two of our journalists being present…" Maia grinned, and, going to the top-drawer of the sideboard, opened it, pulling out first edition of _The_ _Talon_. She had to say, she hadn't hoped for anything this amazing. She had reviewed the content of the submissions and arranged them via subject, each of the articles trimmed neatly and glued seamlessly to the paper. Between her and George, every blank space was filled with an illustration or a photograph; Neville's piece featured a detailed illustration, Ginny's a photograph cropped from a magazine, Ron's a moving diagram and several other little bits that had been submitted by Ginny and Neville.

Every piece had been either hand-written, or neatly typed in different fonts using Maia's typewriter; each piece was beautifully presented on a piece of custom-decorated stationery or coloured parchment, with shimmering or colour-change inks, neatly trimmed and given hand-painted borders, precisely inked; there was colour everywhere, tiny, personal touches from little watercolours, stickers and the flashing, sparkling, shimmering designs for the _Radio_ _Rock_ badges; colourful, pretty stationery was used, in an array of different patterns and effects, and everyone was ecstatic over the quality of their finished product, absolutely delighted that it looked so professional, and eager to hear the articles read aloud.

Depending on who had written them, _The Talon_ was passed around the room, so that each article could be read aloud. Fred and George had them crying with laughter; everyone listened with bated breath and wide eyes as Maia read her instalment of _Opie_.

"…'the captives gazed on in horror as their beloved ship exploded to splinters, the fearsome captain Black Dog laughing, "_Lock 'em in the brig_."

The motley crew of buccaneers and those willing to change their colours for a life of adventure and gold forced the unwilling passengers below decks.

Laughing to himself, as little Opie scaled the rigging, Black Dog strode to the ship's wheel, and bringing out her shining telescope, she heard Black Dog chuckle, murmuring, '…_and really bad eggs…drink up, me hearties, yo-ho_!

'_Now…bring me that horizon_…' Continued in the following edition."

"_Excellent_ first-instalment, Sweetie," George said, around his bubble-pipe, as he and the rest of the _Talon_ staff applauded, as Maia swept the large, white-plumed straw beaver-hat from her head, revealing the flash of a lace cap she wore beneath a sash of iridescent orange-fuchsia silk as she bowed, before donning the hat again.

"You should publish that, really, not just in the _Talon_," Neville said earnestly.

"Mr Kingsfoil, are you demeaning our fine publication?" Fred asked, as George chuckled, buried deep in his seat on the sofa with his workbook open in his lap. Neville shook his head; he was still a little pink in the face from reading out his piece on Gillyweed in front of everyone, to thundering applause from the twins to encourage him. Chuckling, Maia sat back down in her armchair, kicking up her heeled over-the-knee brown-leather pirate-boots on her footstool, the fingerless crimson lace glove on her left hand and the elbow-length embroidered periwinkle satin one on her right catching the light of the candles as she straightened the newspaper with a flourish, a diamond bracelet on one wrist glittering as the long trailing ends of the lilac ribbon she wore around her throat as a choker shone in the candlelight, a painted-silk fan enchanted to fan her gently.

"Ladies and gentlemen, and variations thereupon," Maia said, hammering gently with her gavel, the mouthpiece of an antique hookah clamped between her teeth, as she juggled her slender knitting-needles with the newspaper and George laughed at her address. "I call to your attention our Mr Trufflehunter's review of Charles Dickens' _Oliver_ _Twist_."

"Oh, don't make me read one of mine again," Cedric said, wincing slightly as he set his teacup down carefully.

"What are you talking about? Your piece on mammal Transfiguration was really good!" Ginny said, eyes wide, but Cedric flushed, ever the picture of modesty and shyness.

"Come on, Trufflehunter," Maia smiled, handing Cedric the newspaper.

The top article on the front-page was the a review by Maia of the first _Radio_ _Rock_ broadcast, with a photo of Sirius in his studio, tiny recreations of several favourite Muggle record-sleeves beside it, and three of the _Radio_ _Rock_ badges; beneath that, a report by Fred on the _Battle of the Bands_, with a photograph of the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_, and several candid photos of the first night Maia had met the band. Beneath this was the first part of Neville's intellectual piece on Gillyweed, the illustrations by Neville himself; Maia's small piece on the use of Postage Stamps, including a chart for different types of letters and parcels and their cost, and a display of six stamps, including a limited-edition Canadian 'Royal Wedding' one, was also featured; there was also a reflection from Cedric, which he had managed to write in the shape of a two-handled trophy, of the First Task; a small rectangular box just below the _Battle of the Bands_ article featured a hand-written table-of-contents, and the page-numbers had been inked by Maia by hand as she had pieced other sheaves of A3-sized parchment together with a Sticking Charm.

The next page bore the second part of Neville's Gillyweed article; also, Harry's Patronus Charm, illustrated with the stag Patronus, and a moving illustration of the wand-movement required to produce it; an article by Maia on elementary wand-safety; Cedric's piece on mammal Transfiguration: one on top of the other, Maia had arranged Hermione's _On This Day In History_ articles, one for Wizard-kind, one for Muggle history.

After this came an article from Maia about Middle-Eastern wizard markets, to go alongside Hermione's article on the Wizard community she had visited in France; Cedric had submitted two small, pentagonal-shaped pieces, one on a famous foreign witch and the other, a foreign wizard; and somehow the twins had gotten word about _The_ _Talon_ to their elder-brother Charlie in Romania, and his owl had surprised Maia late last night with a small piece on life in a dragon-sanctuary; a discussion about a Hippogriff named Buckbeak on whom Sirius had escaped two years ago had led to Maia researching Hippogriffs, and doing a small illustrated article on how to approach them.

Maia's favourite page featured the more artistically-inclined articles and the nonsense stories: one of Fred and George's submissions, _The Death of Sid, Loyal Puffskein, Failed Bludger_; a satirical response by Ginny to a _Prophet_ article about Umbridge (illustrated rather succinctly by George as a toad in a pink bow headband); a sumptuous painting and the first instalment of Maia's retelling of _The Twelve Dancing Princesses_; the summary and review from Cedric of _Oliver Twist_ by Dickens that he was in the process of reading out; a full-sized banner illustration for _Opie: Misadventures of a Girl Stowaway_, with 'Chapter One: Accidental Captive' arranged beneath it, the text interspersed with small Galleon-sized paintings; and George had illustrated the Wizard bedtime-story _Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump _to contrast with Maia's Muggle fairytale.

Ginny's article on the latest Quidditch match; a feature by Fred on a specific Quidditch player; Ron's addition of a famous chess-match, detailed with a moving diagram of the decisive move, and the table of Inter-Order Chess Tournament results, completed the _Sports & Hobbies_ section; and a piece on several of the twins' finished products, with examples for their uses and anecdotes about how the twins came upon the idea of them, the accidents during creation seeped seamlessly into the _Advertisements & Promotions_ spread, with an advertisement for Maia's photographed clutch-purses, the order-form modelled after the ones the twins had printed for their shop; a story Fred and George had written about one of their earliest Hogwarts adventures, promoting their new line of Stinkpellets, with a detachable order-form (so the article on the other side of the page need not be cut up) made the segue between human-interest, humour and advertising; a Hippogriff embroidery pattern drawn up by Maia came next (a redirection from the article on approaching hippogriffs on an earlier page); and a refined painting of several of Maia's fashion designs, and the concept sketches for her cosmetics line and jewellery came next: a full A4-page, the left-hand edge stuck to the parchment, revealing both sides of the printed paper, was one of the fully-edited, photographed recipes for her book, beneath which was stuck an advertisement for the book, with an A6-sized order-form with one edge stuck to the parchment to tear off.

On the back page, the bottom decorated with a second blazing phoenix banner, a purple pentagonal piece, with a border of golden runes, listed the Chocolate-Frog Cards each person in the house desired to acquire, and which they would give up in exchange; there was a small amendment in a triangular-shaped addition to the laundry-schedule; a square of glinting midnight-blue cardstock recorded the bets within Number Twelve in sparkling silver ink; and Hermione's forthcoming arrival was announced in a star-shaped piece of fuchsia, bronze-embossed piece of stationery.

Each of the articles were accredited to the journalists using pennames: Maia was 'Sweetie'; George, 'Handsome'; Fred, 'Wooster'; Cedric, as the only Hufflepuff, 'Trufflehunter', after the badger in _Narnia_; Neville, 'Kingsfoil', after the lifesaving plant used by Strider in _Fellowship of the Ring_; Ginny, '882 Pieces', the accursed Aztec gold in _Pirates of the Caribbean_; Ron, 'The Bishop' after the chess-piece; Harry had declared himself 'Dr Clabbert'—so named from _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_, and the page dedicated to the Clabbert, which had a 'pustule in the middle of its forehead…[which] turns scarlet and flashes when it senses danger', much like the way Harry's scar acted as a barometer for Lord Voldemort's moods and proximity; the comparison had sent Ron into silent convulsions of laughter for ten minutes; and Hermione, reasoning that, to remove its power from the people who used it, she herself should use the word, had named herself 'The Mudblood'. Guest journalist Opal, who had contributed nothing but her delicious giggles and unfailing attention during readings, had named herself 'Melody Pond', a "_superhero's_ name".

Cameras had been brought out during the reading of _The_ _Talon_, and hobbies to keep their hands busy while they listened: knitting; George's workbook; Neville potting several bulbs; Ginny teaching Opal cat's-cradle with some yarn; Cedric and Ron playing chess. Teacups were refilled; plates of treats handed out, and when the last article had been read—the note about Hermione's arrival-date, and Maia's small note of thanks to the contributors of _The_ _Talon_—the newspaper was spread on the piano ledge, displaying the paintings for _Opie_, _Twelve Dancing Princesses_, _Babbity Rabbity_ and _The Death of Sid_, and card-games were proposed.

No money ever changed hands during these games: they used the forget-me-not felted roulette-style table-topper, with its funny symbols, animals, runes and numbers, George with Opal clambering into his lap to be involved; the bets for this game were pieces of baklava, petit-fours, rhubarb-and-custards, Fizzing Whizbees, Chocolate-Frog Cards, gumdrops, caramel-coated marshmallow mousse balls, milk-bottles, cherries, the twins' new specified-smell Stinkpellets (they came in 'manure', 'rotten eggs', and 'mouldy socks'), sparklers and _Radio_ _Rock_ badges, and as it grew later, Opal fell asleep curled in George's lap despite their loud laughter, jokes and cheers, re-reading different parts of articles they had particularly liked, crying over George's comic-strip.

A game was created using strips of scratch-parchment, and the empty French glass jewellery casket; writing down the names of musicians, popular actors and historical figures from both Muggle and wizard culture, they split into teams and each took turns, one person trying to hint the identity of the person, the other guessing, trying to name as many people as they could in thirty seconds, laughing at each other's guesses.

They became test-subjects for Fred and George's board-games, still in their rudimentary parchment forms, so the boys could work out the kinks of the games, refine the rules and add more excitement with special-effects, squares that hexed whoever landed on them for the duration of the game, dares for the forfeits, improvements to the artwork, votes on the designs for the tokens that signified each player.

And Ginny came up with an idea for the next issue of _The Talon_: using an old trinket-box, she and Maia wrote down words and phrases, and when each person stuck their hand into the box and picked a sliver of parchment, they had to either figure the word or phrase into their next articles, or build a nonsense-story around it. Maia and Ginny purposely made the words and phrases as ludicrous as they could, hoping for some truly priceless entries into the next _Talon_.

George, who carried the sleeping Opal downstairs when Maia had blown out the candles and gathered the teacups and plates on her bronze tea-tray, was an exceptionally talented wordsmith and artist, and she chuckled to herself over George's additions to _The_ _Talon_ as she washed the plates and teacups, adding them to the draining-board with the collection of wine-glasses and tankards from the Order's meeting.

"Need any help?" a familiar voice asked, and Maia smiled as she washed up the cherry-stamped side-plate.

"You could put some of these glasses away, if you wanted," she said, glancing over her shoulder at George. He was now sans-costume, yawning subtly, and there was a residue of his cheerfulness from the meeting in the glitter of his eyes, the way his lips constantly twitched as if fighting a smile at some memory. "Did you tuck Opal in?"

"Yeah, she's out for the count," George chuckled. "Wish Ginny was that heavy a sleeper when she was that age; Mum used to give us such a hiding for waking her up."

"Was Ginny always the favourite?" Maia asked, because, having observed the Weasleys with their children, she could definitively say that Ginny was at least her mother's favourite.

"Always," George said, without resentment. "Well, before she was born, Bill was the favourite. Mum and Dad's, and ours." Maia sighed softly to herself.

She had never in her life lived with so many people; her brief glimpse into what having siblings would be like had been the year-five trip to the Isle of Wight, sharing a room with four other girls in bunk-beds, and a week-long trip to Greece with her Classical Civilisation class at sixth-form college in early-April. This evening, the _Talon_, had shown her what it might have been like had she been born in a large family, had her parents lived long enough to have other children, had she had cousins…

"I wish I had a big family," she said softly.

"So you wouldn't be left behind," George said softly, succinctly voicing her feelings. She gave George an awkward nod, sighing. "That's why I want a big family."

"You do?"

"Can't you see me, surrounded by kids?" George grinned. Maia laughed.

"Actually, I can, easily. You'd be the life of family parties," she chuckled. "You and Fred, the favourite uncles."

"We'd have it no other way," George chuckled, grinning. "Throw Sirius and Tonks in the mix, we'd be legendary."

"Mm, a mass-murderer and a Metamorphmagus… You know, the possibilities with that are endless," Maia said, and George grinned.

"Every day, a new surprise," he smirked.

"Where would you begin?" Maia grinned. "Actually, I know where I'd begin, I'd give myself a Granddad moustache, you know, like colonels in India used to have." George laughed.

"A moustache, that's what you'd give yourself? Not a different bra-size or, I don't know… Actually, I can't think of anything I'd change about you," George added thoughtfully, glancing at her. Maia blushed.

"What would you change?" she asked curiously.

"I don't know," George said lightly, shrugging. "I might try a turquoise Afro." Maia chuckled. To celebrate her graduation from school to sixth-form college, one of Maia's friends had bleached the ends of her ebony-black hair, then dip-dyed them a shocking acid-green: Maia had had to help, her friend under the impression that Maia had actually dyed her hair that one time she turned up at school with fuchsia hair, and she now found herself wondering…

"Human Transfiguration, at least, studying to do it, starts after O.W.L. year, doesn't it?" she said, glancing at George, who nodded. She had photographs and paintings from her times out with Tonks, and the twins, at the _Weeping Sunflower_ and the _Brass Jobberknoll_, the dance-hall and the music bars, the cafés open late selling exotic coffees and sweet things; she had observed people's fashions, their hairstyles, choice of hats and the details on their shoes, the cut of their trousers, the details on the shoulders of their jackets; with infinite possibilities using magic to change one's appearance, it wasn't only incredibly rare witches like Tonks who were born with the innate ability to change their appearance; anyone with a wand could do it. _After_ they had sat their N.E.W.T. exams in Transfiguration. But, like Maia's friend, she was sure there were lots of underage girls who didn't know human Transfiguration yet who wanted to change their appearances, at least temporarily.

"You're getting that look again," George smiled, and it was a very sweet smile.

"The George-is-giving-me-ideas-so-I-won't-sleep-for-ano ther-three-days look?" Maia said, glancing at him, and chuckled.

"So what is it, knitted animals, werewolves or makeup?" George asked. Maia laughed.

"Out-loud like that, my interests seem rather eccentric," she chuckled, smiling.

"Try love-potions, gallows, gold centaurs, flying-cars and socks," George laughed, and Maia grinned, giggling with amusement. "What are you thinking about?"

"Hair-dye," Maia said thoughtfully. One of her friend's favourite blogs, despite Maia disparaging her for it, was Lauren Conrad's beauty-blog; Maia did like the vintage-feel photographs that accompanied some of the How-To entries, like the mixed-print manicures, and _hair-chalk_. She wondered if there was a potion that could change the colour of one's hair for a limited time. "Did you know that as long as they're not oils, you can use artists' chalk to colour your hair temporarily? As long as your hair's not too dark; it doesn't work on my hair. And you brush it out when you want to get rid of the colour."

"Have you tried it?"

"Yeah," Maia said, with a shrug and a sigh. "It doesn't work on me, though, my hair's too dark. But my friend loved to do it, we'd spend all our A-Level Art lessons mucking about. I helped another of my friends dye her hair, too. I went through a phase of turning my hair fuchsia, or peacock-blue. Almost always not on purpose. But I was thinking that, a lot of overage witches and wizards alter their appearances with magic; but girls my age probably wouldn't know how, even if they wanted to. What if I could experiment with sticks of semi-permanent hair-dye…something that wouldn't flake, or…or dye anything but hair." She beamed at the sudden thought, "I could do _special_ _effects_!"

"Well, you can soon find out how to make something like that," he chuckled. "First lesson's on Monday, at Madam Primpernelle's."

"You got the reminder, too?" Maia smiled. "I can't wait."

"How will that work, with you being under seventeen?" George asked. "You've still got the Trace on you."

"That sounds vaguely dirty," Maia said, arching an eyebrow. "No, because I'm technically being homeschooled at the moment, Professor Dumbledore wrote to the Misuse of Magic Office, and I've got special licence. So I _shouldn't_ come to any bother."

"Wish I had Dumbledore for a guardian," George said thoughtfully. "Can you imagine the access you'd have to things! The Hogwarts library, for starters."

"You _like_ the Hogwarts library," Maia smirked. "I thought that was Hermione Granger's haunt."

"Don't tell anyone," George winked. "It'll ruin my reputation."

"Well, all your experiments can't be uneducated guesses," Maia said. "You'd have to do some prep-work and research things thoroughly. Or you'd have ended up in St Mungo's years ago."

"Exactly," George nodded. "Though if the shop doesn't work out, a career in Healing might be in my future."

Smirking, Maia said, "I thought you had to get all O's in your exams to pursue a career in Healing."

"I can re-sit," George answered unconcernedly, shrugging. Maia chuckled.

"Wouldn't you go into professional Quidditch?" she asked. George shrugged.

"Maybe," he said thoughtfully. He sighed. "But I'd like best to work somewhere that's… I don't know, comfortable. Atmospheric. I can have _Radio Rock_ on, and paint whenever I wanted, spend the afternoon mixing potions, or just daydreaming up new ideas. Especially when I'm a bit older, I'd like something…flexible."

"For that big family you want?" Maia smiled, leaning against the counter as she dried up a plate. George smiled.

"Maybe. Dad was always working when we were little. He had to do overtime a lot, just to make up…" He blushed subtly, but Maia had noticed that whenever he felt a twinge of embarrassment, his broad shoulders would straighten back.

"So he could give you and the others everything you asked for," Maia nodded.

"Within reason," George chuckled. "Why d'you think Charlie moved to Romania to study dragons; tell a kid he can't have a pet-Hippogriff, he goes and becomes a dragon-keeper!"

"So you'd like to be able to spend more time at home," Maia said, glancing at George.

"At least until my kids are all Hogwarts-aged," George said, shrugging. "I liked it when Dad was around, when we were little…" He sighed softly, gazing into the distance. "And when my kids are at Hogwarts, I'd like to travel. Or maybe even before I get married and all that."

"And you think the shop would allow you to do that?" Maia asked.

"Not at first, obviously," George said thoughtfully. "But…Wizard cultures are as diverse as Muggle ones, I'd expect."

"More so," Maia said. "I've seen more of foreign wizarding cultures than I have of British, and Diane took me travelling a lot. I love travelling."

"You've been travelling?"

"Every time I used magic at school… Diane would take me on a 'sabbatical'," Maia said, chuckling sadly to herself. "She would take me out of school for a few weeks, and we'd visit someone in some far-off, exotic country. Always witches and wizards, always well-connected, powerful, _interesting_. I'd learn a little about what they did for a living, learn about their culture. But then we'd come back, and I'd go back to school and catch up on work, everyone had forgotten whatever I'd caused…"

"I'd like to go to the Far East," George smiled.

"The originators of _fireworks_," Maia smiled, and George grinned.

"Exactly," he smiled.

"I'd like to go back to the Middle-East. It's interesting how the different cultures there have evolved, amongst wizards, without the presence of religion," Maia said thoughtfully. "_Very_ interesting cultures out there. Plus, the fashions are _fabulous_. They make the costumes for _Kingdom of Heaven_ look tawdry."

"Did they inspire your _Twelve Dancing Princesses_ paintings?"

"Some," Maia nodded. She put the last wine-glass up on its shelf. She started laughing. "_Babbity Rabbity_."

"'_Mrs Tiggywinkle_' is _just_ as funny a name!" George smirked. "And what about 'Winnie the Pooh'? And you can't deny that the premise for a Hobbit isn't a bit odd."

"What, hairy feet don't appeal?"

"The lifestyle, I could get behind…the leathery, hairy feet… No, not for me… Just imagine the cost of shampoo." Maia laughed, shaking her head. She tidied up the sink, and motioned to the stairs; George followed her up.

It wasn't long after Maia climbed into bed that she was completely, utterly, blissfully asleep; it had been a _long_ day.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: The first glimpse of _The_ _Talon_; this'll feature prominently during Maia's and the twins' attempts to oust Umbridge from Hogwarts. An underground newspaper for the students—and reporting to the parents just exactly what's going on with their kids at school, e.g. the quills Umbridge uses for 'lines'. Please fill my Inbox with reviews for when I get back!


	23. Chapter 23

**A.N.**: Hello, my darlings, I'm _home_! I come back from two weeks _abroad_ with an absurd tan-line on my shoulder, RSI in my right-hand from writing over a hundred and twenty pages of story, and a profound dislike of French paparazzi. Sorry, Kate; you deserve to holiday in privacy.

I now have to type up those hundred-odd pages of story… All but about twenty are for _Pleiades_ (the others are for my _Teen Wolf_ fanfic _The Judgement of Actaeon_) so I'll have a tonne of material to keep you updated with while I get settled at university next week. Boo.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_23_

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><p>"Can brains ping?"<p>

"I didn't realise there was a hypochondriac in our midst."

"I swear, the last hour of that class, I distinctly heard my brain go _dink_."

"Well, then, your brain _dinked_, it didn't _ping_."

"Well, whatever sound it made, my brain _hurts_."

"Well, stop using it then."

"You'd have to carry me home."

"Oh."

"How're you doing, Mai?" George asked, after kneading his temples. "I thought Snape's classes were rough, but I don't think I've ever got more done in the last six hours than I did in six years of Potions lessons!"

"And this is one of _six_," Fred moaned.

"_Il faut_ _souffrir pour être belle_," Maia said tiredly, yawning. "'One must suffer to be beautiful', so say the French."

"I never did like that Beauxbatons lot," Fred griped, his expression black.

Exhausted, both physically and mentally, and laden down with the fruits of their not-inconsiderable labours, they dawdled back down Diagon Alley towards the Leaky Cauldron. A medium-sized diamond-weave basket had been supplied by _Madam_ _Primpernelle's_ to keep all of their creations in; Fred and George had been the only male students, Maia by far the youngest, and when they hadn't been frowning intently, watching on, and making incredibly complex notes, they had been giggling with each other, plaiting Maia's hair out of the way so it didn't get in the potions or mixing-bowls, testing their creations out on George, catching each other with Maia's camera, kissing each other's cheeks with every new product they completed and tested, while Fred chatted up some of the other women in the class, flirting with the supervisor.

The name of the first class they had chosen was 'Lips and Fingertips'. They had made several variations apiece of lipstick; lip-balm; lip-_scrub_; lip-gloss; lip-liner and lip-stains. Matte finish, satin, high-gloss, and shimmer, scented, tinted, plumping, hydrating, softening, colour-change, glitter, and in hues they each created themselves. They had also focused on nail-lacquers: scented, strengthening, buffing, healing, glitter, shimmer, iridescent, no-mess, special-effects; and made three different types of nail-polish remover—healing, scented and buffing. They had worked on potions to remove makeup, to soften the skin, moisturiser, cuticle-crèmes, instant-drying potions for lacquers, and they had come away with full manicure-pedicure kits and lip-brushes.

One could not simply wave a wand and suddenly have an entire range of cosmetics made reality from daydreams; it was _hard-core_ labour. It was a lot of grinding, mixing, spreading, tempering, pulling, pouring, measuring, stirring, temperature-reading, charming, testing… As George had said, Maia didn't think she'd worked so hard in a long time. Half the women in that class had been doing it for the _pleasure_ of it! But only she, Fred and George seemed to have enjoyed themselves, because they were going to be _doing something_ with their newfound knowledge of magical cosmetics.

Each student had been given a full makeover at the beginning of the lesson, the better to help the teacher cater to each individual witch's complexion for the specific shades she required for each product she would be making. Fred and George didn't care that, walking down Diagon Alley, they still had their beautiful red lips to compliment their skin-tone and hair-colour; and after having enjoyed full manicures, their fingernails were beautifully polished. They had been the hit of the class, allowing the beautiwitches to work on them unflinchingly. Pulling out pictures of Ginny and Opal, they'd even had a good few chats with the older ladies about their granddaughters—and lunch was spent at a little bistro gossiping with all of them, leading to a general consensus that Maia's idea for cosmetics _wouldn't_ be a colossal waste of an investment.

The day hadn't been a waste, either; hard work it had been, and her shoulders and back were sore from leaning over the workbench and grinding pigment with a pestle and mortar; but she had a basket full of cosmetics (they had all been given free samples of other _Madam_ _Primpernelle_ cosmetics she and the twins were due to learn how to make in the upcoming weeks) and a journal full of complicated, incredibly detailed notes and recipes she and the twins were going to work together altering; they, for joke-cosmetic items, Maia, for her own range of sassily-named lip-products and nail-lacquers. Next week, they'd be working on eyes and cheeks. And then they would get into the good stuff: toners; foundation; moisturiser; blush; powders; highlighters; stains; lotions; body-butters; waxing treatments; dermatological potions. Hair required an entire _day_ to tackle. Maia couldn't wait, but it had been bloody hard work, especially since a few of the most basic charms used during the session, she was still working on with Sirius' help. But thrown into an intensive day-course had done wonders to smooth out the kinks of those charms she didn't particularly use on a regular basis at home, and both she and the twins had learned new charms, too.

"I am so tired, the…the only thing keeping my head up, really…is my lungs," Fred sighed; sat at a table outside Florean Fortescue's, they all had their eyes closed, slumped in their chairs, hands curled loosely around bottles of chilled Butterbeer. The heat, their tiredness, they waited for Bill in almost complete silence.

"I'm sorry I'm not…vivacious this afternoon," George murmured, facing Maia with eyes closed, nodding off every few minutes. Maia smiled, reaching out to idly pat his leg, and yawned as she reached for her Butterbeer, eyes shielded by sunglasses, barely keeping them open herself.

"That's alright," she yawned. "You two were bubbly enough this weekend to make up for your lack of _sparkle_ today…"

This weekend, they had stayed overnight at the Hobbit-hole: Sirius had figured out how to transport his broadcasting equipment and set it up in the open, and he had joined them in the grounds, broadcasting live while the rest of them played Quidditch using a selection of Muggle balls; Tonks, Ailith and Bill had arrived in time for a barbecued lunch of fresh trout caught from the stream, corn-on-the-cob and ratatouille picked fresh from the vegetable-patches, before makeshift tents made of sheets of _Liberty_ floral cotton had been put up in the meadows, folding DIY pillow-beds and sleeping-bags unfurled, soft cotton pillowcases handed out, and they had all had a nap; then headed to the beach for a late-afternoon swim to wash off the sleep and sweat from playing all day.

Darkly-tanned like a nut, subtle burns colouring their cheekbones and their hair sun-bleached (at least Maia and Sirius had been) the evening had brought another barbecued feast, with an open fire to toast things on as the sun dyed the sky a glorious sunset; the Weasleys seemed to have gotten more freckly as the day had progressed, and Neville had burned, Opal had been slathered in high-factor sun-cream, and Cedric had remained in the shade unless flying. They had told stories around the fire, Sirius spinning a story using a deck of cards and terrifying himself as much as Opal when several owls hooted in the woods, diving for prey; they slept in their tents, warmed by the lingering heat of the day, cooled by a gentle breeze, listening to the sounds of nature, the whisper of the trees and wildflowers in the long grasses, the rippling, lazy streams.

It had been a long, lazy day, full of laughter, sun-drenched and _hot_; the heat-wave continued through into the end of June, getting hotter and dryer, but combined with Sirius playing all his favourite summery, energetic songs on the wireless; flying and playing make-believe with Opal and playing board-games in the heat; drinking their way through iced cordials, Butterbeer, Pimms, and Maia's potent, delicious cider, Sirius paying for the twins to go and treat them all to ice-creams from Florean Fortescue's; paddling about in the streams and the pond, running around in their swimming-costumes to Opal's delicious giggles; walking to the beach and having sandcastle competitions and tossing Opal and Ginny into the water; taking lots of photographs, _laughing_. Maia had even found her old vintage red tricycle, and she had laughed, teaching her how to ride it, while the twins took turns wobbling, grimacing and grazing their knees falling off her bike.

After a breakfast of sausages, eggs, fresh tomatoes and mushrooms cooked over the fire, they had all, bar Sirius, made their way to Diagon Alley to visit the market, taking Opal so she could sample her way through the food stalls and become entranced by the magical equipment and pretty things offered in the other tents, and the twins had made several purchases from foreign wizards selling more exotic potion-ingredients and equipment. The market having gone on into the afternoon, they had drifted back to Grimmauld Place, still deeply tanned from the previous day, built up again by spending all day at the market, their sunburned cheeks darkening, eyes bright and happy, to find that Kreacher had prepared a full roast-dinner for them.

The twins had called the _Talon_ staff into the upstairs parlour for an exclusive premiere of a handful of their newest products, and then, listening to Sirius' late-afternoon Sunday broadcast, they had all sat in the den, helping the twins to review the completed first game in their collection of board-games—which Mrs Weasley thought they had created only to give them all something to do during the holiday, and thus, approved of it.

The weekend had been a long one full of sun, music, laughter, photographs and food, camping overnight in the meadows, sun-drenched and smelling like brine from the sea, cooking over an open flame. There was nothing like the taste of breakfast cooked out in the open. Everyone had come back from the Hobbit-hole _happy_, and the sun had done everyone good, especially Sirius. Tonks had had them in stitches once, tripping over thin-air while she ran over the meadow; and Maia had gotten firsthand experience of what it must have been like to grow up in the Weasley family. Bill, Tonks and Sirius combined had sent Opal into a fit of the giggles that had become infectious; Bill had teased his brothers, played laughingly with Ginny, laughed deeply with Ailith, whom he had been at Hogwarts with, and had teased Maia as he would a sister, throwing her over his shoulder and dumping her laughingly into the lake.

Maia had become the twins' beard: Together, they had come up with a simple, clever plan to keep Mrs Weasley from getting suspicious. Having told Mrs Weasley they wanted to go back to the Hobbit-hole, the better to brush up on their flying so they didn't get rusty before September's new season, Maia had also said she wished to go to the Hobbit-hole. Neville was part of the plan, and happy to be so; bearing a picnic in a basket, he had used the Floo Network this morning to get to the Hobbit-hole, and would have spent the day tending the vegetable-patches, picking ripe fruit from the orchards. If Mrs Weasley asked, Neville would tell her that he and Maia had had a nice day gardening together while the twins had Bludger practice.

Everyone but Mrs Weasley knew that they weren't going to the Hobbit-hole. Whether he didn't want to make trouble with his wife, or if he secretly supported his sons' endeavours despite his wife's opinions on the matter, Mr Weasley didn't say a word about what the twins were doing. But Mr Weasley knew enough that Maia at least would be in Diagon Alley today, because he, Sirius and Professor Dumbledore had arranged for Bill to meet her there after work. Bill was to give Hermione something Dumbledore had written, revealing the Order's headquarters, thus granting her access to Number Twelve.

"Look at you all!" a warm voice chuckled. Maia started; she had dozed off. Squinting in the dazzling sunshine, she glanced up, and saw Bill, bedecked in his finest Wizard-punk regalia, the fang-earring flashing. "One day of work, you're all tuckered out."

"We have…delicate constitutions," George murmured, as Fred yawned, stretching luxuriously.

"Is it only _five_?" Fred sighed.

"How are you two going to last, running your own business?" Bill smirked, plucking the bottle of Butterbeer out of Fred's hand and taking a swig.

"Easy," Fred grunted.

"We intend to do as little of the actual grunt-work as possible," George said.

"The beauty part is, they actually grunt while they're doing it," Maia mumbled, and Bill laughed richly.

"Soon as we're up and running—"

"We'll be sitting up in the ivory tower—"

"Ordering our lemmings around," Fred said, grinning with satisfaction as he clasped his hands behind his head.

"How was work?" Maia asked Bill, who handed Fred back the bottle, which he took, looking disgruntled at the dribble of Butterbeer Bill had intentionally left in the bottom of the bottle.

"It was alright," Bill said, sighing.

"_Why_ did you give up tomb-raiding, Bill?" George asked, not for the first time; no-one in his family—well, his siblings—could wrap their heads around why adventurous, clever Bill, had traded a life in the exotic deserts of the Middle East and Africa, a combination of Indiana Jones and a male Lara Croft, for a _desk_-_job _in _London_. "You must be so _bored_ in the office."

"There are compensations," Bill said evasively, smiling. George quirked an eyebrow, glancing at Maia, who shot him an inquisitive look.

"What does that mean, _compensations_?" Fred frowned. Bill shrugged. Unusually shrewd, George was staring at his eldest brother.

"It's _her_, isn't it!" he grinned elatedly. "That girl you're trying to hide from us! She works at Gringott's!"

"Oh, maybe she's still there!" Fred grinned, throwing himself out of his chair in the direction of the snowy-white marble bank. "We could go scope out the office. She's bound to be _blonde_, that's your type."

"I don't have a type," Bill sighed, wrangling Fred by the neck before his little brother could get very far, dragging him back to the table.

"You do. Chummy was blonde," George said, and, staring at Bill, Maia noticed _something_ flicker across his handsome face.

"Oh, Chummy!" Fred moaned, raising a hand to his heart.

"Who was Chummy?" Maia asked curiously. The way the twins said their name, she was sure they had been incredibly fond of whoever they were.

"The sister we should've had," Fred said, giving Bill a very tart look; Bill rolled his eyes, looking a little disgruntled.

"Yeah, Chummy's the girl Bill _should_ have married," George said conspiratorially.

"We already had our dressrobes ironed out," Fred said, looking a little misty-eyed.

"And if Bill hadn't decided he wanted to play _Indiana Jones_ for a living, they would've got married," George sighed, shaking his head: the recent marathon of _Indiana_ _Jones_ films had spurred a lot of make-believe adventures for playtime with Opal, who was infatuated with Bill since discovering his job had been like that of Indiana.

"Wonder what Chummy's up to now," Fred said thoughtfully. "God I hope she married someone _wealthy_ and handsomer than Bill."

"Thanks," Bill said gruffly, sighing.

"Your own bloody fault," Fred countered. "Staying in Britain and having a family wasn't _good_ _enough_ for you!"

"So this girl, this one who's got you whipped enough to _enjoy_ sitting at a desk eight hours a day doing paperwork… What's she like?" George asked. "Will she ease our sorrow over losing Chummy?"

Choosing to ignore his twin brothers, Bill sighed, glancing at Maia. "You ready to go? Hermione's train should get in soon."

"Yes, I'm ready," Maia said.

"We'll see you later," Bill said, addressing his brothers. "Stay _out_ of Knocturn Alley."

"Tell us her name."

"My parents really should have stopped with Charlie," Bill sighed, and Maia laughed as she strode alongside him toward the Leaky Cauldron. Tucking the diamond-weave basket into her tiny bag, careful not to dislodge the contents, when Bill offered his arm Maia grasped it, and felt the now-familiar effects of Apparition. They reappeared in Waterloo Station.

"So which train is Hermione on?" Bill murmured, as Maia strode to the screens announcing the different arrivals and departures. Bill was a very talented wizard, Maia had heard; but it seemed only his father had the fascination with Muggles in the Weasley family, and the flashing electronic amber announcement-boards were alien to Bill, as were the ticket-barriers, even the names of some of the small convenience shops located inside the station—Maia had arranged to meet Hermione outside the _W.H. Smith's_.

"You know that at some point, you are going to have to introduce this mystery-girl of yours to your family," Maia said, leaning against the railway-line map just outside the door to the newsagent's shop.

"Yeah… In a few years," Bill nodded, leaning up beside her, arms folded over his chest. Maia laughed.

"Let's face it, your brothers—even Ginny—have a presence that cannot be denied," Maia smiled fondly. The Weasleys were exactly what she had always wished her family could have been like; huge, sprawling, _fun_.

"They _are_ a force to be reckoned with," Bill chuckled, grinning.

"You know, if you keep her away from us too long, we might begin to suspect either that you're ashamed of us, or that you're ashamed of _her_ and are afraid how your family will react," Maia said.

"I'm not afraid of my family," Bill smiled. He amended, "Well, except for the twins."

"Right. Well, I hope for your sake she's at least half as cool as you are, otherwise you know she won't stand a chance," Maia said, smiling at Bill.

"Maybe we should just get married," Bill said lightly, glancing at her. Maia grinned.

"Well, there's an idea," she said, nodding.

"At least you'd feed me properly."

"Mm. And pay great homage to that hot, hot man-bod of yours." Bill burst out laughing. Chuckling, he glanced at her, eyes twinkling.

"So, how was an entire day with the twins and no buffer?"

"Well, you saw the lipstick."

"They had a good time, then," he smirked.

"They were the hit of the entire class," Maia rolled her eyes, smiling with amusement.

"I'd expect no less," Bill chuckled softly.

"It was hard work, though," Maia yawned.

"Did you learn any new magic?"

"A lot of it," Maia nodded, tired. "I don't know how they do it in the Muggle world, I'm sure it's a lot of vats and ugly machinery, but I'd never actually thought about how makeup was _made_." She sighed. "The twins have asked me to take them to Harrods."

"Isn't that the Muggle toy-shop?"

"No, that's Hamley's," Maia corrected. Eyes widening at the thought of the twins let loose in Hamley's, she blurted, "You could not _pay me_ to take the twins in there!"

"You're learning," Bill chuckled.

"I'm a quick study," Maia replied. "No, Harrods is the…well, a luxury department shop. One of the floors has a huge selection of cosmetics companies and perfumeries."

"I hope you got photographs of the twins in makeup."

"Oh yeah. I'm saving them for the Christmas cards."

"Do I want to know why they're looking into learning how to make cosmetics?" Bill asked, sounding as if he could barely bring himself to ask.

"I think they're doing a line of joke-cosmetics," Maia said. "They're equal-opportunists."

"So you'll be the unwilling victim of another few _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ tests," Bill smirked, and Maia turned to stare at Bill.

"You heard about that?" she winced.

"Everybody in the office heard about that—we had _Radio_ _Rock_ on!" Bill laughed, grinning, his navy eyes twinkling.

"Oh, come on!" Maia exclaimed indignantly, her cheeks warming.

"You gave good scream, I'll give you that," Bill chuckled. Maia rolled her eyes, suppressing a shudder at the memory of the wriggly, cold maggots. A throng of passengers disembarking from one of the trains entered the main terminal, tripping over suitcases, meeting friends and family-members, dashing off to get to the Underground, and Maia watched carefully; it was Hermione's train.

"Isn't that her?" Maia asked suddenly, standing up a little straighter, as a very tanned girl with a lot of bushy brown hair and straight, white teeth lingered near the door to _W.H. Smith's_, looking around as if searching for someone.

"Hm?" Bill said, glancing at Maia; she gestured in the girl's direction. Bill smiled. "Oh, yes! _Hermione_!" The bushy-haired girl glanced over. A smile illuminated her face. Maia had seen photographs of Hermione from past years at Hogwarts and holidays with the Weasleys; she wasn't as tall as Maia had expected, and was rather more petite, and actually prettier than anybody had let on she was.

"How was your journey?" Bill asked, giving Hermione the one-armed hug Maia knew well.

"Not too bad, actually," Hermione smiled, glancing at Maia. "Hello, Bill! And you must be Maia?"

"Yes," Maia beamed, leaning in to give Hermione a hug. "It's so nice to finally meet you!"

"And you," Hermione grinned.

"Are you two ready to go?" Bill asked, checking his pocket-watch. "Hermione, do you have any luggage?"

"No, it's all in here," Hermione said, indicating the beaded purple bag Maia had sent her a few days ago with the 'family' owl, Borgia. She shot Maia a smile. "An Undetectable Extending Charm? How did you…?" Chuckling, Bill intervened before the two could start chatting about complex charms that gave the proverbial F-U to every law of physics there was.

"Come on, you two can talk later," he chuckled. "Hermione, if you just grab my arm. Maia, grab the other."

"Rose between two thorns," Maia smirked, chuckling, as Bill grinned; a second later, they had Disapparated.

Hermione stumbled to her knees on the parched grass in Grimmauld Square, panting. "Oh _my_—"

"It takes some getting used to," Bill said, helping her back to her feet. "At least you didn't pass out or throw up."

"Give it a minute," Hermione mumbled.

"Maia, d'you want to go and knock on the door?" Bill said, and Maia nodded; as she crossed the road to Number Twelve, she saw Bill pass Hermione a sliver of parchment. Knocking on the front-door—freshly painted Gryffindor scarlet—Kreacher unlocked the many jangling chains and scraping bolts. No sooner had she kicked off her shoes under the round table Sirius had placed flush to the banister, where a mound of shoes had collected from the various occupants, than Bill and Hermione were entering the hall.

"Kreacher, this is Hermione Granger, she's a friend," Maia said, gesturing to Hermione. "She's founder of that society I told you about."

"Welcome, Miss," Kreacher said, bowing—then catching himself, with a smile at Maia; she didn't like him bowing in supplication. For one, it was embarrassing; and Kreacher was old, his poor little stooped body unsuited to it.

"Hello, Kreacher," Hermione said kindly, smiling. "It's lovely to meet you."

"Where is everyone?" Bill asked.

"Mistress Weasley is getting ready to go on guard-duty again, young Bill," Kreacher said, in his deep bullfrog voice. "Master Remus is in the kitchen; Master Sirius is in the studio, already broadcasting; and the unnatural _beasties_ have just fifteen minutes ago returned home. Kreacher assumes they were up to no good. They always are, putting Bubbling Beverages in Miss Opal's drinks, stringing Master Cedric's clothes out the window, disrupting the greenhouse and making explosions in the attic, putting nasty maggots in my mistress's bath…" Hermione shot Maia an inquisitive look.

"I'll explain later," Maia said, as footsteps sounded on the kitchen stairs, and a streak of ginger launched itself at Hermione.

"Crookshanks!" Hermione laughed, as the bundle of ginger fur in her arms purred loudly. Remus made his way into the hall, smiling.

"Remus, you didn't see the twins when you got back, did you?" Bill asked, his brow furrowed.

"Yes. Um, _why_ were they both wearing lipstick?" Remus asked, glancing at Maia, who smiled charmingly. Remus rolled his eyes.

"I'd best be off," Bill said, checking his pocket-watch again.

"You got a hot date tonight, Bill?" Maia asked innocently.

"As a matter of fact, I do," Bill smirked.

"Remember what the twins said," Maia said. Bill gave her a look. "It's all fun and games until you get a haircut—then they'll be forced to scalp the girl responsible." Bill gave her another look, before giving her a one-armed hug, shaking Remus's hand, and smiling at Hermione; Kreacher locked the front-door after Bill.

"Hermione!" Remus beamed, turning his attention to their new guest.

"Hello, Professor," Hermione smiled.

"Please, call me Remus," he smiled. "It's very lovely to see you."

"And you," Hermione smiled. "Maia said you'd be here. And Sirius, too?"

"Follow the music upstairs, you'll find him," Remus chuckled. "Maia, do you want to show Hermione around the house? Oh, and you might have a few extras in your meeting tonight." Remus' pale eyes glittered with amusement as Maia put on an expression of feigned innocence.

"I don't know what you mean," she said, straightening her shoulders. Remus chuckled.

"Even from the dining-room, we could hear your laughter up in the attic," Remus smiled. "Very clever, making the attic door accessible only by password."

"Well, I've been reading _Hogwarts: A History_," Maia said, smiling. "Honestly, I don't know why all teenagers don't make their bedroom-doors password-protected."

"Because it's complicated magic," Remus smiled.

"So you say we might have guests present?"

"There may be some children coming along for dinner," Remus said.

"Really?" Maia raised her eyebrows, surprised. "Maybe the 'kids' can eat down in the kitchen, the adults can eat in the dining-room."

"If that's alright with you," Remus shrugged. He smiled warmly. "I know you have much more fun when we're not around."

"I wouldn't say that; you join in on the fun just as much as Sirius does," Maia reminded him, smiling; it was Mrs Weasley who disliked boisterousness at the dinner-table. One meatball accidentally flung from Fred's fork during a particularly heated conversation about Quidditch, and she had threatened to curse his hands off for starting a food-fight.

"Well, I know you'll all find it far easier to gossip about us and exchange ideas about what goes on during Order meetings when we're not there," Remus said, and Maia raised her eyebrows, clearing her throat.

"Again, I have no idea what you're talking about," she said. Remus chuckled.

"They're all upstairs in the playroom," he said. "Opal found a _sword_."

"Oh dear," Maia grinned.

"And I have to go and see Tonks' parents. She's trying to convince them to get involved," Remus said, checking a battered pocket-watch so he missed Maia's expression. He was going to meet Tonks' parents? In the brief moments they'd had alone, Maia and Sirius had discussed Tonks' _fondness_ for Remus. They were like teenagers, it was very sweet; watching the way Tonks flirted with Remus to see how far she could push him, making him blush, before he found himself reciprocating, his expression always surprised that he was responding to her flirtation; and even Ginny and George had noticed that Remus liked looking at Tonks. "I'll see you all a little bit later. Don't let the twins have that sword."

"Hm. 'Control', and 'twins'," Maia chuckled. "Two words that go together like 'iron' and 'forehead'." Remus laughed.

"Fair point. I'll see you later," he chuckled, bidding Hermione goodbye before disappearing onto the flowerpot-clustered porch-step of Number Twelve. Again, Kreacher locked the door behind the departed, and he turned to Maia.

"Will Mistress Maia be requiring anything? Tea, Pimms, some sweet morsel to snack on?"

"Is there anything upstairs for the others? The twins will probably need a pick-me-up," Maia said.

"Kreacher will put a spread together for the playroom," Kreacher croaked. "With chocolates for Miss Opal, the full-moon approaches."

"Thank you, Kreacher, and then go and have a rest," Maia said, and Kreacher nodded, smiling. Kreacher disappeared with a _crack_, and Maia glanced at Hermione, who was still stroking Crookshanks. "I'll give you a partial-tour on the way up, shall I? You're in with Ginny, if that's alright."

"Yes, that's absolutely fine," Hermione smiled.

"Right, that's the door to the kitchen stairs," Maia said, gesturing to the concealed door in the under-stair panelling. "There's always something to eat down there if you get hungry, and there's usually a few jugs of Pimms or cordial on ice, as it's so hot. Then we've got a cloakroom, the dining-room—the Order has their meetings in there, now. This is the library." She flung open the door, revealing the progress she, Sirius, Cedric and Kreacher had been making on the bookcases; the wallpaper had been stripped, the furniture polished and reupholstered, and half of the bookcases were almost empty, scrubbed to a diamond-shine and polished, bearing the books that had escaped Sirius' purge of Dark artefacts, all of them restored.

"Wow," Hermione said softly. "It's….huge."

"And it was full of Dark books," Maia said, sighing; she had sewn the curtains, got the wallpaper, repainted the window-frames; all they needed to do was finish purging the shelves, and they could fully redecorate. "Cedric and Kreacher have been helping Sirius go through them all; the ones we can save are restored, else they're chucked out. Sirius and I are going to put our books in here, once it's fully redecorated."

"Will you have enough books to fill the shelves?" Hermione asked, smiling.

"Oh, more than," Maia said idly, gazing up to the mezzanine stair and the gallery. Showing Hermione upstairs, Maia pointed out the drawing-room, "Forbidden, until Sirius can supervise us cleaning out the glass-fronted cabinets"; the music-room, "the Frabjous Chizpurfles practice there during the week"; and the den, which was empty but for Sirius in the studio. He had his feet kicked up on the desk, was shirtless but wearing his leather trousers and sunglasses, basking in the sun from the windows, idly chatting about Wizengamot legislation, his finger curled around the neck of a bottle of Butterbeer. He raised the bottle in salute, and Hermione waved, smiling, before Maia showed her out of the room again.

"In there's the music library. Organised alphabetically by genre and then by name," Maia said, indicating the bookcases full of records. "Whether or not you'd like to, you'll be receiving some education in magical and Muggle music over the summer."

"I can't believe Sirius has a wireless station," Hermione laughed softly. "It seems just the sort of thing he might've done with Harry's dad."

"Flaunting his fugitive-freedom to the rest of the world while protected by a Fidelius Charm," Maia smirked. "Yes, I thought so too."

"I haven't heard one of his broadcasts yet," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"Oh, they're excellent," Maia smiled. "We've recently added different, er, quirks, to his sessions."

"Quirks?" Hermione smiled.

"We've started doing 'Confessions'; people will write in with their secrets, some of them are _hilarious_, and Sirius will read the one he likes the most, we all have to vote on whether they should be forgiven; and we all sit inside the studio while Sirius does factoids, like a pub-quiz for us, teaching the Weasleys about film and Muggle music; and Sirius wants to do a 'Very Foolish Thing', people writing in asking him to do different stupid stunts," Maia smiled. "Of course, they all have to be done live. And every day, I give Sirius a different word or a phrase he has to fit into the broadcast without anybody noticing," she smiled. "The beginning of the week, it's pretty standard stuff, animals and fruit, but, uh…by the end of the week, well, on Saturday night, the word was 'blowjob'."

"Oh!" Hermione laughed.

"That was a gem from Fred," Maia smirked.

"How long have the Weasleys been here?" Hermione asked.

"A little over a week," Maia smiled. "They make a place their own pretty quickly."

"I thought Bill worked in Egypt," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"He applied for a desk-job, here in London," Maia said. "Apparently, when he recalled the Order, Professor Dumbledore asked Bill to join; he has excellent knowledge on goblins, makes it easier for members of the Order trying to repeal legislation to do it the way the goblins want it."

"I've been getting the _Prophet_ while I was away," Hermione said, "I've been reading about that _awful_ Umbridge woman. Some of those laws she's forced through the Wizengamot are archaic. And _racist_."

"I know," Maia said heavily. "There's a special place next to Hitler waiting for her in Hell."

"Wanting to round up and _brand_ centaurs," Hermione frowned scornfully. "What've they ever done to her?"

"Maybe she ran afoul of them in the Forbidden Forest," Maia said thoughtfully. She glanced at the other girl as they reached the third-storey gallery. "I hear you, Ron and Harry met the Hogwarts' herd of centaurs in your first year."

"_Yes_," Hermione shivered. "The first and _only_ time I've ever been inside the Forest. Draco Malfoy tried to get us expelled, sending off Hagrid's illegal dragon hatchling to Ron's brother in Romania."

"He's been telling me," Maia smiled.

"Ron has?"

"Apparently you are the direct source of his second-year traumatisation at the pincers of giant Acromantula," Maia said, grinning. "I probably should have warned him that Shelob in _The Return of the King_ was a spider the size of an elephant."

"You've got the Weasleys watching Muggle films?" Hermione asked curiously, and Maia nodded.

"Sometimes it's too hot to do much else," she said. "Or, like today…" Following the sound of laughter, they entered the third-storey gallery, the playroom spreading out in front of them. Sitting on a 'throne'—a very old, high-backed, intricately-carved chair Maia had painted gold and upholstered with gold silk she had embroidered—and bedecked in another of the _Marie-Antoinette_ dresses Maia had sewn for her (this one of latticed-rose printed cotton with pink bows), the long veil she so preferred, and a serpentine diamond and emerald tiara set jauntily on her piled-up curls, innumerable necklaces draped around her neck with a Billywig-feather stole, was Opal. She bore a gold sceptre and a Snitch. In front of her were Cedric and Ginny, both decked out in plumed Cavalier hats and rapiers, gazed on imperiously by Opal.

"—Queen Opal—"

"_King_ Opal!"

"You're a girl, Opal. Girls are queens."

"Well, I'm a lady, and I'm a King, so there!"

"Alright—_King_ Opal, the Benevolent."

"Stab him, Ginny, he's giving me cheek!"

"Apparently, King Opal isn't quite so benevolent today," Maia smirked; and, glancing at the other side of the room, she burst out laughing; she had heard Offenbach's 'Can Can' from the second-storey, and now found its source: having found a record of the music, the twins had apparently decided to get into the spirit of the song; George, by donning violet and lilac silk bloomers trimmed with lace and silk roses, with incredibly bright periwinkle and cornflower ruffled silk petticoats taped up to reveal the bloomers, and the beribboned pink stays Ginny had donned for the _Talon_ reading on Friday-night; Fred, by putting on sunflower-yellow and gold satin bloomers trimmed with black lace, stays of vibrant shimmering iridescent olive-green taffeta, and ruffled, rosette-covered petticoats of peacock-blue, a garish fuchsia and midnight-purple satin.

Bouncing so their petticoats swished gaily, fluttering luxurious long eyelashes, swishing feathered painted-silk fans, the twins danced around with each other, puckering their red lips for kisses, sending coy glances to Ron, who was locked in a set of stocks.

Maia produced her camera from her bag, grinning as she finished off her roll of film, while Hermione laughed, and Crookshanks leapt from her arms to the stocks, his bushy tail tickling Ron's long nose.

"Oh," George cooed, tickling Ron with the feathers of his silk fan. "You know you wanted new dressrobes?"

"Look no further—"

"Because we've found the _perfect_ dressrobes for you, Ronnie," George beamed, as, with a flourish, Fred produced a set of witch's robes found upstairs, a boned set of dressrobes of floral chintz styled into a 'zone-front' gown, but with a lurid acid-green lining, orange and fuchsia ruffles, coral-coloured swags and jaundice-yellow rosettes.

"We improved them a little, of course," Fred said, nodding.

"But you'd look just _darling_ in them," George grinned.

"And remember—" Fred added, as Ron opened his mouth to retort, squirming futilely in the stocks, "King Opal has given the word that we're to add another ten minutes to your sentence for every nasty thing you say to us."

"_Sweetie_!" George exclaimed, bright-eyed, when he'd caught sight of Maia. "Fred, our significant-other is back!"

"Hello, poppet!" Fred exclaimed, tossing the dressrobes over Ron's head as he strode over to Maia, air-kissing both cheeks in the French style.

"You look absolutely _ravishing_ in those outfits, darlings," Maia said, keeping a straight face.

"Well, cosmetics were the creation of men for men," Fred said, fluttering his lashes as he fanned himself.

"We've decided to start a new trend," George said, also leaning in to give Maia several air-kisses on the cheek, as Fred did the same with Hermione.

"Well, good luck getting others to cotton on," Maia smiled.

"Oh, we have ideas," George grinned, and Maia giggled softly and brushed his hand aside as he reached to playfully pinch her cheek.

"I'm starting to hate that grin," Cedric sighed, pausing in his sword-fight with bandana-clad Ginny. "It always means they're going to test out their inventions on me."

"Now, Cedric, why would we waste cosmetics testing on you, the _Adonis_ of Devon, when we have the bounty that is Ron's face?" Fred said, as George nodded, and Cedric blushed embarrassedly. Some muffled words issued from the heavy chintz dressrobes under which Ron was now probably baking, and Opal, her tiny feet bound in dainty little decorated ballet-slippers Maia had made her, hopped off her throne.

"Who are you?" she asked, striding right up to Hermione, eyes wide and inquisitive. "Papers, please!"

"Papers?" Hermione repeated, glancing at the twins, then Maia.

"I have them here, Majesty," Maia said, curtsying very deeply, and pretending to bring out a wallet from her pocket. "I am Ingrid, Duchess of Givenchy, and this is my cousin, Esmeralda, the Viscountess of Harrod."

"Why are you naked?" Opal asked imperious; they had watched an old Tenth Doctor episode of _Doctor Who_, the one with Queen Victoria and the werewolf, thus, Hermione's garb of shorts and a small t-shirt was subject to Opal's disapproval. And Maia's legs being bare, the shorter, flirty hem of her handmade sundress flashing her knees, Opal raised her fair eyebrows at Maia expectantly for her excuse.

"We've both had growth-spurts, Majesty," Maia sighed, aggrieved.

"Pets, clothe these naked girls!" Opal ordered, and the twins sank into curtseys.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Fred cooed, as George swept up Opal's trained veil to follow her back to her throne. Hermione glanced at Maia.

"_Doctor Who_, the new _Alice in Wonderland_, the twins and too many sweeties," Maia said, as explanation. As Fred approached the open-fronted costume wardrobe, dragging Hermione over to be clothed appropriately, Maia chuckled, taking photographs. She was supplied with a pale-beige Georgian gown of raw-silk, as many necklaces as could be found, her plumed _Talon_ 'thinking-cap' hat, her mismatched gloves and a hookah.

"Now, you, darling," Fred said, a hand to his chin in thought, the other on his hip, sizing Hermione up, and started rummaging through the costume-wardrobe, to Hermione's amusement.

"Where's Neville?" Maia asked, realising her quiet, agriculturally-inclined friend was absent from their make-believe.

"Upstairs," George said, grimacing subtly. "Got a hell of a sunburn. Mum's sorting him out before she goes."

"On duty _again_!" Fred crowed, raising his fists triumphantly.

"On duty, _and_ we've got another reading tonight," George grinned, glancing at Maia. "Herm—I mean, _Viscountess_, did you write anything to contribute to our fine supplemental this evening?"

"I did, actually," Hermione smiled. "I sent them on last night so the…_Duchess_ could put them in the _Talon_."

"Excellent. I believe you'll find one of my contributions this evening to your taste, Maia," George smirked.

"Oh, really?"

"I finished one of those books you like so much," George smirked again. "_Immortals After Dark_?" Maia grinned, even despite her blush; _Immortals After Dark_ was the name of her favourite supernatural erotic novel series. Every book was so utterly captivating and visual; she had started turning specific scenes into watercolours: Garreth feeding the silver butterfly sugar-water; Kaderin sharpening her sword with a diamond file; shackled, insane Conrad and his brothers; Holly, overlooking the church of Wendigo; numerous ones of her favourite character, Nïx; Lothaire and Ellie dabbling their toes in the phosphorescent surf; Carrow and Malkom in his steam-cave; the girls at the Cat's Meow for Girls' Night Out; Malkom and little punk-ballet Ruby on the dreary beach; Mari and Nïx climbing out of ghostly Néomi's studio mirror. George had picked up _Dark Desires After Dusk_—Cadeon and Holly's book, one of Maia's favourites—and had got stuck in.

"Hm," Maia smiled, her cheeks warm. "And how did you find it?"

"Educational," George said, and Maia burst out laughing at his expression.

"If all your lessons were like that, you might've got top-marks," she smirked, and George grinned.

"Hey, how was—?" Ginny began, glancing from the twins to Maia. "How _was_ your lesson?"

"Exhausting," Fred grimaced, and Maia snorted, because George was giggling

"I had no idea being a girl involved so much _work_," he frowned thoughtfully, fluttering his fan.

"You don't know the half of it," Opal sighed, to general amusement.

The late-afternoon and early evening was dedicated to playing make-believe with Opal, and showing Hermione around the house, indoctrinating her into the ways and customs of Number Twelve, forcing her to sit and listen to part of Sirius' broadcast. The only reprieve Hermione was granted, between a water-fight using Sirius' collection of colourful water-pistols as soon as Mrs Weasley had left to go on duty, and playing cards with sweets for currency, was to get herself settled in her and Ginny's pretty twin room, and write a letter to her parents to say she'd arrived safely. Winging its way to them, borne by Borgia, by the time Hermione's parents received the letter from their daughter, Hermione was clutching her stomach with laughter, playing the twins' first fully-finished board-game, the brand-new, beautiful prototype. It was the _Monopoly_-inspired game, and Maia didn't know _how_ the twins had come up with it, but it was fantastic!

George's wish for pop-up illustrations had come true, and then some: Diagon Alley's many shops and several stalls featured incredibly accurate miniature towers of gold cauldrons, barrels of beetles' eyes, perfume jars, two liveried goblins, bats, cats and owls that hooted and hissed in cages; the upright spiral of offices for the seven Departments of the Ministry (detailed with _minute_ little paper-aeroplanes fluttering around the chandeliers, working _Titanic_-era elevators, jingling chains on the chair in Courtroom Ten), with the glittering golden Fountain of Magical Brethren; Hogsmeade's famous pub the _Three Broomsticks_; the Shrieking Shack; Honeydukes; and on a grassy cliff, the Hogwarts castle, greenhouses glittering as if in intense sunshine, the sparkling lake (with minute tentacles that poked their way out of the 'water' occasionally, representing the giant-squid) below the cliff's edge, and even Mr Hagrid's hut, with a black boarhound on the front step; and another tower, this one storm-tossed, representing Azkaban (without the Dementors swarming around it), came to life when the board was set out flat, exquisitely three-dimensional, as if George had miniaturised each of the shops, thatched cottages and glittering greenhouses. Three many-sided die with runes and numbers, pentagon-shaped Chance and Bonus cards, tiny gold-coloured tokens (the Hogwarts Express, a dragon, a Gringott's cart, a Snitch, a tiny cauldron, a little person on a broom, a sphinx and a phoenix, with several others, all animated), tiny bronze Burrows, thatched silver chocolate-box cottages and champagne-gold castles completed the set; different squares around the board joke-jinxed the person to whom the token that landed on it corresponded; there was some very clever magic there, as Hermione rather unwillingly admitted.

Maia didn't know how the twins came up with their inventions, or how _bright_ the twins must be, contradicting their poor O.W.L. results, to actually follow through with experiments and finished products modelled after what they came up with in daydreams during lessons. But they were exceptionally gifted, very clever and imaginative wizards. They were _impressive_, and Maia was learning as much from them as they were by spending time with her, cooking, to pursue production of their edible-product ideas; learning how to make cosmetics; utilising inspiration that came from the most mundane of things—Mrs Weasley's clock, for example, the one that had no numbers, but nine hands, each with the name of a Weasley on it, and which was one-of-a-kind: the twins wanted to produce much smaller versions, playing on parents' worry over their children; love-potion _kits_ for the private Potioneer, disguised as N.E.W.T. Potions apothecary-refills; unbreakable alarm-clocks that shrieked like a banshee, louder and louder, until the owner got out of bed; non-blunting, non-shatter, stain-repelling pencil-cases and an assortment of quills, self-inking, spell-checking, smart-answer and non-blotting; leather journals that wiped themselves blank if any but the owner tried to glimpse the contents.

The only lull in an otherwise chock-a-block day was a half-hour nap everyone took before dinner, very welcome by Maia, who was tired beyond belief: chivvying a grumbling Opal downstairs—she got more tired the nearer her transformation approached—they were again playing the twins' board-game, to general hilarity, when the new members of the Order were escorted down into the kitchen for drinks.

"Oh my god," Ginny said quietly, looking up from her Chance card.

"What? The streaking forfeit?" George asked. Maia smiled, shooting him a look.

"No, _look_," Ginny said pointedly to her twin-brothers, and they glanced toward the foot of the stairs. Maia glanced over her shoulder. Ailith had arrived, Sirius escorting her and another witch into the kitchen. Whoever she was, the witch was _stunning_. Pretty blonde hair was subtly styled away from her face in vintage waves to her shoulders, large diamond drop-earrings sparkling in the sunlight, and her face gave the illusion of being without makeup, her rose blush blended so beautifully into her high cheekbones, her complexion flawless and matte despite the incredible heat, her lips a very subtle nude-pink, all attention drawn to her beautiful hazel eyes, luxuriously lashed with undetectable false inserts and pristine liquid eye-liner that flicked daintily.

She wore very smart black skirt-suit robes, but instead of a buttoned blouse or even a ladylike silk ascot (as Maia had seen several Ministerial-type witches wear) beneath her blazer, she wore nothing; the narrow lapels glittered subtly with tiny black beads, a glamorous touch to an otherwise completely mundane office outfit. To look at, she was sophisticated glamour, done effortlessly—and with the emphasis on sophistication.

"Who is she?" Maia asked softly. She was _beautiful_. Those cheekbones alone, women would murder for. But the twins weren't listening; their expressions utterly elated, they had both risen slowly from their seats, cards and die tumbling to the table.

"My _darling_!" George exclaimed, sounding choked-up.

"My _dear_!" Fred cried, eyes misty. The woman glanced over her shoulder, and _beamed_.

"Oh, you rocking kids," she remarked, and Maia was surprised by how deep and sultry her voice was. She was surprised further by the woman bounding over to the twins—who had both vaulted over the table, flinging themselves at her; laughing richly, she hugged the twins back as they wrapped their arms around her like boa-constrictors.

"You're not dead!"

"Am I not?" the woman chuckled richly.

"We thought you'd _died_, Chummy!"

"You never wrote to us!"

"Bill said you were _never_ coming _back_!" George cried, his face rapturous as he hugged the woman's hips, his head against her stomach, as Fred pretended to sob into her shoulder.

"Get _off_, you're making me sick!" the woman laughed playfully. Maia gazed at her, remembering earlier, at Florean Fortescue's, Fred and George mentioning someone named Chummy that Bill had been rather unwilling to talk about, and if easygoing Bill didn't want to banter with his twin-brothers about a woman named Chummy, with Bill's handsomeness, and this woman's beauty, Maia assumed there was history there.

"Where've you been?" George demanded, straightening up with a snap.

"You disappeared without a trace," Fred said vehemently, disentangling himself from the woman.

"Our _hearts_ were _broken_!"

"I'm sorry, boys," the woman smiled gently.

"_Sorry_? _Eight years_—"

"And not a single letter—"

"And you expect us to accept _that_ as an apology?"

"Yes."

"Well!"

"Right then!"

"That's that!"

"_We accept_!" the twins chorused.

"Eight years, you've not changed," the woman chuckled warmly.

"Why, have we not grown?" the boys preened.

"In everything but good sense." Looking tired but smiling, Mr Weasley dropped into the kitchen. Just back from work, he flicked his wand at the teapot as he smiled, offering his arms; the woman beamed as she latched on for a hug.

"Arthur!" she smiled warmly.

"You're even prettier than the last time we saw you, my dear," Mr Weasley smiled.

"And you are quite unchanged," the woman smiled. "Handsome as ever."

"That's enough flirting with our dad!" George said, as Fred tugged childishly at the hem of the woman's blazer. "Come and sit down. Have a play of our game. _We_ _made it_." Maia, observing the way the twins were interacting around this woman, couldn't help noticing how excited the twins were, acting around her as if she was a much-loved elder-sister they loved nothing more than to impress and amuse.

"Tea, Chummy?" Mr Weasley said.

"Thank you," the woman smiled, as she was sat down in a place of honour by the twins; Sirius and Ailith sat down at the other end of the table, talking quietly, their body-language relaxed and open, inviting, very friendly. Maia glanced back at the woman named Chummy.

"You got the stamps off, then?" she said, glancing at Fred and George, who both raised their hands at the same time to touch their foreheads, expressions rather rueful. Glancing around, Chummy said, "I got tired of being unable to distinguish one from the other when they were little, so I forced George to tell me who was who, and stamped their foreheads with a Sticking Charm."

"Took Mum a year to get rid of the ink," Fred said dully.

"But don't worry—" George grinned.

"We got our initials tattooed on our arses—"

"If you want to see—"

"No, thank you," Chummy chuckled.

"Fair enough," Fred sighed.

"You're missing a treat; they've got nice dottems," Opal said, reaching out absently to pat Fred's bottom, and everyone laughed; George reached out to rumple her hair affectionately.

"Listen to her!" Sirius laughed.

"How old are you two now?" Chummy asked, glancing at the twins.

"Seventeen." Chummy grimaced.

"Feeling your advanced age, Chummy?" Mr Weasley teased, cleaning his glasses with a cloth.

"It's when your nieces and nephews reach their teen years, you know you're getting on a bit," Chummy sighed. "Especially when you remember them being _born_."

"How many nieces and nephews do you have now?" Mr Weasley asked curiously.

"Twenty-six, at last count, and still going."

"Almost as bad as the Weasley clan!" George grinned.

"So, do you have a boyfriend?" Fred asked subtly.

"I'm between lovers at present," Chummy smiled, sipping her tea.

"Excellent!" Fred grinned. "May I offer up our bodies and souls for your consideration?"

"We're a package-item," George said, nodding.

"Hm. Twins. They do keep things interesting," Chummy laughed, and Maia chuckled.

"Especially these ones," she agreed.

"What are you up to these days, Chummy?" Mr Weasley asked, glancing at the twins' board-game interestedly.

"I'm in the Office of Magical Law," Chummy said, with a soft sigh.

"Not the Auror Department?" Mr Weasley asked curiously. "You were so excited to be accepted to the Academy."

"I spent a little while in the Auror Department, after I finished my training," Chummy said. "I got so frustrated with the way things work there that I decided I needed to help try and change the way things are run, so I made a lateral move to the Office of Magical Law nearly two years ago."

"That explains why you're so turned-out and sophisticated, Chum," Fred said warmly.

"You look amazing," George said, with a rich smile.

"As always," Fred grinned.

"What are you specialising in?" Mr Weasley asked, as Chummy chuckled softly; her expression changed, and a slight frown darkened her features.

"At the moment, trying to put a stop to all those pro-pureblood laws that are somehow getting pushed through the Wizengamot," Chummy said darkly.

"I think it's _disgusting_ that in this day and age, archaic laws like that even get taken seriously!" Hermione exclaimed passionately.

"I know," Chummy said heavily.

"Hermione's a Muggle-born," Ron said, speaking up for the first time since Chummy and Ailith's arrival in the kitchen; he was rather taken with beautiful Ailith. "And she's the best in our year."

Glancing at Hermione, Chummy said, "My mother is a Muggle-born, too."

"And one of the finest witches I've ever had the pleasure of being acquainted with," Mr Weasley professed, topping up his teacup.

"Thank you," Chummy beamed proudly. "She'll be pleased to hear I've had the chance to catch up with you all."

"We've missed you at The Burrow," Mr Weasley smiled.

"I've missed our chess matches. And Molly's mince-pies and Christmas jumpers," Chummy laughed.

"You know you're part of the family if you get a Christmas jumper from Mum," George said in an undertone to Maia, who smiled, nodding.

"I even miss plaiting Ginny's hair before a story and bed!" Chummy exclaimed, glancing at Ginny.

"She's grown up a bit since you last saw her, hey?" Mr Weasley beamed at his only-daughter.

"Just a little bit—and very prettily," Chummy laughed, eyes twinkling. Glancing at the twins, she added, "And these two. Never would've expected you to be _handsome_. And you were two _dorky_-looking kids." Maia laughed.

"Hey!"

"I've even got pictures," Chummy said, winking at Maia.

"No!" the twins cried, aghast.

"How old were the twins the last time you saw them?" Hermione asked, smiling.

"They must've been about…nine?" Chummy said, glancing at Mr Weasley for confirmation.

"Must've been," Mr Weasley nodded. "Percy—" He broke off abruptly; his teacup shattered as it hit the floor, and Mr Weasley suddenly went very white. "I'm terribly sorry, I've just remembered—" Flicking his wand as he fumbled with his pocket-watch, the teacup repaired itself and sailed neatly to the tabletop, but Mr Weasley made his way back upstairs without another word.

Chummy watched him go, wide-eyed, and turned to the eldest of his sons present. "What's going on with Percy?"

"He dumped us," Fred said flatly.

"Like the bag of dragon-dung manure he thinks we are," George growled softly, with an uncharacteristically nasty expression on his face.

* * *

><p>The twins' advertisement for their new board-game featured in the newest issue of <em>The<em> _Talon_; as did one of Maia's watercolours for the first instalment of _Rumpelstiltskin_, a small piece on the _Levicorpus_ spell, and Hermione's submission of the new S.P.E.W. manifesto. Inspired by the first edition of _The Talon_, which was passed to not only Hermione to read but the _four_ children who accompanied their parents to Grimmauld Place, the second edition of _The_ _Talon_ would surpass the first, with the confidence everyone had gotten from the success of the first reading.

The children were all werewolves, like Opal. An older witch, a werewolf herself and one of Remus' oldest contacts, had taken in an abandoned child afflicted by the bite; two more had followed, from different families, and only the families' financial support made it possible for her to take care of her little family. Each of the children were under ten years old, and had formed a family of siblings-by-circumstance. Their birth-parents had all but abandoned them in all ways but financially. The fourth child was a very quiet little boy of Aboriginal-Caribbean descent, with _incredible_ olive-green eyes, and was claimed immediately by Opal as her boyfriend. Memory, the little boy, arrived with his father, one-time schoolmate of Sirius and Remus, though he had been in a different House. Both Memory and his father had been bitten by Fenrir Greyback; Memory's mother hadn't survived the attack.

Nothing could inspire children to come out of their shells like the Weasley twins. They must have some kind of superpower, because as Maia observed them, her stomach aching from laughing so hard, there was just something about them that brought out the best in everyone around them… Shy, sweet Vera, mature-for-his-age, rather regal Horatio and the incredibly sweet Thomas with his warm cinnamon eyes and hesitant, dimpled smile, the baseball-hat he wore like Porky in the _Little Rascals_, were all initiated into the playroom, screaming with giggles, playing card-games and dress-up, having water-fights with the small, colourful water-pistols they had collected in the house.

In the brief interlude before the Order arrived, Maia got a glimpse of just what it must have been like for the very _young_ Weasley children (at the time) to have someone like Chummy going out with their favourite, coolest brother. Chummy, George told Maia later, was Bill's first and most-beloved girlfriend.

And she was _fab_.

The twins wouldn't let Hermione steal all Chummy's attention—Chummy's father was head of one of those ancient pureblood families, and each of his children had a house-elf to help with their ever-growing families: the twins coerced her to try out their game.

Tugging her pretty hair into a loose ponytail, she had plucked her earrings out with a sigh, tossing them into her handbag, and kicked off her sleek, pointed black patent heels; and grumbling over wearing her bra and blazer all day, she had borrowed a beaded t-shirt Tonks had handed down to Maia, and Chummy had thrown off the blazer, sat cross-legged on her chair with little Thomas cuddled in her lap as they played the twins' board-game and enjoyed Maia's homemade treats.

Chummy was _fun_, despite being a lawyer, as Maia teased. It was quite clear the twins absolutely adored her, and she laughed so richly at the board-game, applauded the twins' efforts with their inventions (which they couldn't seem to demonstrate quick enough!) and teased and tickled Memory and Thomas, and Maia, her stomach hurting from laughing, couldn't think of a cooler woman. She had a hell of a sense of humour, was laidback but hardworking, and took more pleasure in spending time with her ever-growing number of nieces and nephews than anything else. Despite having appeared as a very sophisticated woman, the perfect makeup and killer heels, she was a wonderfully normal woman who had been idolised by the twins when they were little. Together with Tonks, who kept altering her appearance to riotous giggles from the children when she arrived from work, Chummy, Sirius and the twins kept everyone in hysterical, breathless laughter, tears pouring down their cheeks. George was hiccoughing as badly as Thomas and Maia got a lot of extraordinary lovely photographs of the children, the twins, Sirius and Ailith, Tonks and Chummy—one of her favourites was of Chummy, Ailith and Tonks together, and one of all the children, including her, taken by Sirius while they crowded together.

When some of the Order members appeared for the meeting, the kids fled upstairs delightedly, first to the playroom, where they encouraged the little kids to attack each other with water-pistols—wary when they organised and went after the twins—or taking turns with Fred or Cedric on their brooms, having a Mad Hatter's tea-party, Vera disappearing in the dollhouse village, or playing badminton with an old set of rackets and shuttlecocks Diane had given Maia for her seventh birthday. It was in the playroom, taking a short breather to have a drink from the selection of jugs of drinks Kreacher had set up on a sideboard full of board-games, that George told Maia the details about Chummy.

The day they had left Hogwarts, Chummy had proposed to Bill. They had been going out since fifth year. But Bill had wanted to go on tomb-raiding adventures, already had his job as a curse-breaker set up; he had left for Egypt barely a month later. Everyone's hearts had broken when Chummy—whose full name was Isolde Iola Felicity Dalgrene Proudfoot (and whose father had said 'long dogs need short names', a reference to Chummy being quite tall and svelte)—had dumped Bill, preferring a clean break if a long-distance relationship was aimless. Chummy hadn't known Bill was back in England; she hadn't seen him since they broke up, eight years ago.

Fred and George took turns at the barbecue, cooking dinner for the younger houseguests; with fingers dripping from melted butter from the corn-on-the-cob, beetroot and apple salad staining their lips, full from burgers, sausages and a dessert of Maia's homemade minty, berry frozen-yoghurt, they had sat the kids in front of _Pirates of the Caribbean_ to calm them down and keep them entertained. They had sat in wide-eyed wonder.

The three siblings—Vera, Horatio and Thomas—went home with their adopted-mother, with baking-parchment cones full of sweets, Wildfire Whizbangs, a few Polaroid pictures, copies of Maia's and George's paintings, and a promise that one weekend, they could go camping at the Hobbit-hole with everyone.

Standing on the porch step, smiling and waving goodbye, Maia laughed softly; quiet and reclusive to begin with, thanks to the twins, Opal and Chummy—and Maia, who had painted Vera's nails with the lacquer she had made earlier that day—they had really brought those children out of their shells, and they were _happy_ as they went home with their rather misty-eyed adopted mother.

The idea of inviting them to go camping had been something to get them through their upcoming transformation, which Remus said was incredibly painful. It gave them something to look forward to.

It was decided that, with Chummy's presence, the Talon meeting would be postponed until the following evening; sitting in the den, drinks were poured, numerous games were brought out, Jack was broadcasting, while Memory's dad told stories about the Marauders' time at school, the pranks he had been victim of, the girls Sirius had been caught kissing, the Quidditch matches Sirius had streaked during, the parties: Chummy got giggle with Hermione, Ailith, Tonks and Ginny, sipping some of Maia's cider, telling everyone stories of the twins' shenanigans when they were little, a lot of which had happened when the twins were too young even to remember them, and most of which involved them being in some degree of nudity. They danced around to the music Jack put on, and the girls gave aeach other manicures, whiel the twins got Memory whipped into a fervour over their mini dragon fireworks, and Sirius had Memory and Opal sitting on the sofa, entranced, wide-eyed, as he told them stories using a deck of cards, making them jump.

Memory was only permitted to leave Number Twelve when his father had solemnly sworn an oath that Memory could return; else, Opal threatened to elope with six-year-old Memory. Like the other children, Memory left Grimmauld Place clutching sweets, Wildfire Whizbangs and copies of paintings he liked, to pin to his bedroom wall. He also left with a kiss from Opal, of which Maia got a photograph.

Chummy found it far more difficult to escape Grimmauld Place.

She only left when Sirius managed to slip a Sleeping Draught into the twins' drinks. Maia had by that time curled up on the sofa beside George, who was snuggled up to a snoring Fred, and watched sleepily from under her eyelashes as Sirius and Ailith curled up close on the other sofa, Sirius' arm draped around Ailith, his hand resting casually on her hip, hers on his thigh as they shared a glass of Maia's cider.

_Sirius and Ailith_… _Tonks and Remus_… Smiling to herself as she dozed off, Maia thought, _Opal and Memory. Could call this the 'love-shack'_.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: This chapter is a reward for the numerous reviews I had waiting for my in my Inbox when I returned from holiday! Thank you, everyone.


	24. Chapter 24

**A.N.**: Hi everyone! Thank you so much for all of the wonderful reviews! I know I describe things a lot, but that's just the way my stories appear in my head, with a lot of detailed imagery.

_Alisabeth_; I'm not really sure, but on the self-centred Lauren Conrad blog '_The Beauty Department_', they mention her using them a lot. Personally I have very dark, curly hair, so chalks would be useless on my hair!

_MuggleCreator_, I have a few phrases for you: Sandman; werewolves/vampires in Muggle culture; _The Da Vinci Code_; the Time Warp; Sirius! Are those the kinds of phrases you were looking for?

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_24_

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><p>"…'<em>cause I love to live so pleasantly, live this life of luxury, blazing on a sunny afternoon, in the summertime…in the summertime…<em>" she hummed along to _The_ _Kinks_, beaming to herself. Because she was listening to Sirius' broadcast _on her pocket-wireless_.

"You've finished it," George said, a smile illuminating his face as he handed her a sweating glass of Butterbeer. Maia smiled, dusting her handkerchief across her forehead, accepting the drink; seven o'clock in the evening, it was still blisteringly hot; it was also the first time in almost a week that she had been able to come out for a drink _alone_ with the twins.

Or, more accurately, been _kidnapped_ by the twins and forced to have a drink; barging into her room not twenty minutes ago, the twins had grabbed her by the underarms and ankles and bodily carried her out of Number Twelve, Apparating with her that way to the Leaky Cauldron. She was barefoot and braless, perching on George's knee because there had been only two unused chairs when they had arrived at the _Sunflower_'s beer-garden. She was wearing her button-down spaghetti-strap denim dress, the top button undone letting her breathe, but also showing a good bit of cleavage to George as he wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her perched in his lap. She was also holding her knitting, which she had been working on when they had _absconded_ with her, her brand-new pocket-wireless in her lap.

"It looks even better than I'd imagined," Maia beamed proudly. Five inches long, three tall, two deep, the front of the wireless featured a small gold tuning dial, and inset into the right-hand side, one of the bubble-speakers she had bought for Sirius, miniature but powerful; the right-side featured a tiny socket to plug in charmed headphones she and the twins had both been working on—they, for their eavesdropping instruments, Maia for this project: the top-left featured the tiny gold On/Off switch, and a small volume control. She had chosen a trinket-box the carpenter had modified with sections carved out so she could push the wireless receptors into it, but it was inlaid with beautiful motifs in contrasting woods in the design of a phoenix, and she had given it a rich varnish after using a Permanent-Sticking Charm to keep the wireless bits in place.

"I can't believe no-one's thought to produce them sooner," George said thoughtfully, sipping his own Butterbeer, eyes on the little pocket-wireless. Maia smiled; she had to confess she'd taken a lot of inspiration from early 60's pocket transistor-radios and the new iPods, but not all inventions were radical, some were just sleek, money-saving re-imaginings of an old idea.

"I've got enough supplies to make about ten of them," Maia said. "It was cheaper to buy ten wireless receivers than one direct from the supplier."

Maia had neat plans and paintings for different designs she had come up with to decorate the pocket-wireless: If she produced them for sale, of course. If she didn't market them with the inlaid motifs, she had thought of plain, unfinished wood casings that she could customise; painting a decal onto the back (for example, a phoenix), or lacquer the wood different colours; and use colourful base-coats for different patterns, shimmering _quatrefoil_ or pretty floral, vibrant polka-dots. She also had ideas to trim some of the girlish or more childish ones with beads, fake gems. Chummy loved her design for a shimmering leopard-spot wireless; and Opal, who liked looking at the pictures in Maia's diaries, had asked for a dusty-lilac pocket-wireless that glowed different colours in the dark like _Doctor Who_'s star-whale, so Maia was also working on one of them for Opal as a Christmas-gift—intended to be from her _and_ Padfoot.

"Good idea," George smiled, picking up the wireless and examining it. "You've applied for the patent?"

"I already received it," Maia beamed. "I talked to Lance and he put me in contact with the Ludicrous Patents Office at the Ministry."

"Are you going to mass-produce them?" George asked curiously.

"Well, the carpenter said the design for the casing is very easy to produce, he could whip up huge batches of the unfinished ones in a day, if I wanted," Maia said, shrugging. "This one took him a little while to create, because of the inlaid motifs, but this is…my special one. The others, I'd just have to assemble, but I'd have to decorate the casings myself."

"You should market them. _Or_ we could supply Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes with them," George smiled.

"I wanted them to be cheap—well, affordable. Something parents would buy their older kids for big birthdays or a large Christmas present," Maia said. "Something young-professionals could afford to treat themselves with even on a starting-salary. If you supplied the shop with them, you'd have to buy them from me and mark up the price to make a profit."

"How much did this one cost?" George asked, indicating her finished pocket-wireless.

"Well, as I said, this one's an exceptional one," Maia said. "It's more expensive because of the effort put into the detailing. Let's just say, if I were to charge a Galleon for the ones I'd decorate myself, I'd get at least four-fifths profit."

"Wow," George said, raising his eyebrows.

"It's perfect, actually. If I were to manufacture them, I'd have the monopoly, could charge whatever I liked—ten Galleons, if I wanted!" Maia said. "And I talked to Lance about a licence to use the Quidditch League colours, I thought, if I was to manufacture them, the League colours would sell really well amongst teenage boys. I just don't know whether I should commit to manufacturing them; I don't know whether the cost of applying for the licence would be worth it."

"I definitely think it would be," George said adamantly. "Even if you just made up one large batch and took them to Hogwarts, you'd sell out in a day."

"Well, I figured out that if I was to manufacture them, and sell them at the price I thought was fair, it would only take a sale of twenty to break even," Maia said, biting her lip. "That's including the cost of applying for the patent, and for the licence to use the Quidditch League colours—"

"Oi, you're not supposed to be _working_," Fred admonished, striding over with a handful of Butterbeers, a basket of fresh, hot chips clamped between his teeth. "We kidnapped you so you'd be forced to _stop_!"

"I feel like we never get to chat anymore. Who are you?"

"We just spent all day together at Madam Primpernelle's!"

"Alright, keep it all bottled up—"

"—but it's not healthy." Maia chuckled, relaxing into George's lap with her knitting, enjoying the sunshine, sat under an umbrella in the beer-garden behind the _Weeping Sunflower_. Sweating bottles of Butterbeer glowed in the sun, and everywhere it was lively and cheerful with people sharing drinks and fresh chips or nibbles at the other tables, several children playing on a magical playground.

Maia had never seen a Wizard playground before, but she wished she'd had one growing up: the golden slide bore the likeness of a sitting sphinx; a carousel of unicorns, phoenixes and hippogriffs tinkled playful music as children were flown around and around; and the tinkling mermaid fountain was a favourite to splash around under in their knickers while their parents laughed and got the cameras out.

George watched Maia's knitting flash; she had been able to knit before she could talk, and now could knit complex Fair Isle in her sleep. Inspired by the rabbits she had started knitting for Opal's toy-menagerie, Maia now had not only rabbits, mice and foxes but several bears, moles, badgers, elephants, pigs, cats and wolves, and a completed hippo she was rather in love with. Each of the animals were completely unique, the colours chosen at a whim and each featuring patches over their eyes or coloured noses or striped or chevron stockings, tiny beads at the straps of their little shoes; some of the rabbits had ears pointing up, some down, some of them were Dutch bunnies, some of them were black bunnies with seed-bead eyes, some were pale with patches on their faces; some wore jumpers and shorts, or waistcoats, all in different colours and patterns, the girls wore dresses, some with designs knitted into them, some striped or polka-dotted, some wore tutus, some of them had tiny straw hats bought from a doll-maker's supply shop. Some had knitted clothes, some had dresses made from the surplus of fabrics in Maia's ever-growing collection of remnants from making herself and Opal new sundresses (she was also working on two new dresses for Ginny).

"You've been busy, too," Maia pointed out, as she sat knitting, listening to the delicious giggles of the children splashing about under the fountain, the chatter of the other patrons. "I'm surprised you kidnapped me, you've been on a roll."

Coupled with access to Mundungus Fletcher for hard-to-come-by potions ingredients, as well as their classes at _Madam Primpernelle's_—and the first of their sweet-making classes earlier in the week—she new the twins had come a long way with a _lot_ of new products. Not just completed experiments, but ideas for new inventions. She'd learned the Cushioning Charm to prevent George becoming black and blue with bruises from testing their Fainting Fancies, and she and Ginny had had to give Mrs Weasley an alibi for the twins when she'd suspected the boys of duelling, their faces smeared with blood from testing another of their inventions. They were constantly working on their board-games, using the rest of the residents in Number Twelve as primary testers for feedback and critiquing, and had send two prototypes out, one to Vera, Horatio and Thomas, and one with Chummy to take to her parents' house for the enormous Sunday-lunches her family had, with all twenty-six of her nieces and nephews. They were working on their joke-cosmetics and fireworks; the contents of the apple-bottles Maia liked so much; the love-potions Maia had been commissioned to artwork for; and things like a heavy-duty bruise-remover to get rid of any evidence that may tip Mrs Weasley off to their continued inventing; confidence-boosting breath-mints; X-Ray Specs (they had made dinner with most of the Order incredibly entertaining!); their banshee alarm-clocks; and their versions of Mrs Weasley's clock, with hands featuring family members' names, and their occupations.

"We have been busy," George agreed, stifling a yawn against Maia's shoulder. They had had the 'Apples and Eyes' session at Madam Primpernelle's earlier in the week, more tiring and complex than the first lesson, specifying in blushes, cheek-tints, highlighters, bronzing-powders, eye-shadows and pigments, eyeliner, mascara, eye-creams, eyebrow tints and waxing treatments; today they had endured a gruelling all-day lesson on the complexion: toners, moisturiser, lotion, dermatological potions, foundation, setting powders.

"Yeah, but you've not been up to the attic in days," George said quietly; he had his cheek resting against her shoulder, eyelashes tickling her hot skin. Maia glanced down at him; she knew she missed their evenings spent relaxing on the sofa in the _Talon_ Office, as it had been renamed, bouncing back ideas and exchanging paintings, sharing a pot of tea, talking and laughing.

"I didn't want to interrupt your creative blitz," she said.

"Yes, but after a desert, the oasis just made us greedy," Fred said, and George nodded, reaching for his Butterbeer.

"Yeah. We _miss you_," George said.

"Well, I tell you what, why don't I come up later, and we can go over plans to help get rid of Phlegm."

On Thursday, Bill had introduced his family to Fleur Delacour.

By the end of dinner, she had offended half the dinner-guests and alienated the other half. She had even tempted long-fuse Maia to throw an uncooked hunk of meat in her face; she had complained that Maia had overcooked the meat.

Before dessert had even been produced, the twins had had enough of her haughtiness, and sent her home with a very bad nosebleed. Maia had been complicit in this plan, pretending to put something in Fleur's drink that George had mimicked passing to her; while Bill had been eyeing her warily, Fred had levitated something into Fleur's wine.

The twins had later premiered their second completed Skiving Snackbox. Nosebleed Nougat. Their session in the sweetshop kitchen had been highly productive, and the twins were now proficient at making nougat, wanting to visit the special town in the south of France famous for producing it. Maia had helped with the development of the product-packaging for the Snackboxes. Aware of Professor McGonagall's fox-like hearing from her own lessons, Maia had pointed out to the twins that the rustle of sweet-wrappers would be conspicuous during note-taking in lessons. A neat cardboard packaging box contained a little metal mints tin. The cardboard packaging featured a picture of a youth eating one end of the nougat, causing a sudden, rather dreadful nosebleed, and then popping the second half into his mouth, wiping the blood on his sleeve, and grinning, the nosebleed gone; the packaging also contained the explanatory information on the back.

"What was he thinking?" George sighed, thoughts still on Bill and Fleur.

"He was thinking he'd get the inevitable out of the way quickly," Maia said. "Unfortunately, it wasn't painless."

"Why did that have to be inevitable? We didn't have to be put through that," George said, shaking his head before sipping his Butterbeer.

"Bringing someone like _her _home," Fred frowned scornfully. "Does he forget what kind of a family he was raised in, to think we'd like someone like that stuck-up, condescending—"

"I know!" Maia said, throwing her hands up defensively, laughing. "His judgement has been impaired by a pretty face and a hot body."

"Dad warned us not to go for looks alone," George said, shaking his head. "Remember, Fred, in the Top Box at the Quidditch Final?"

"Ironically, during a display of Veela rage," Fred smirked. "And Harry said, remember, before the Yule Ball? Delacour's grandmother was a Veela."

"It'd be interesting to see whether she turns birdlike when angered," George smirked.

"That'd cool his _passion_ for the French tart quick-like," Fred said, with an identical smirk.

"Has Bill just not _noticed_ how she talks to people?" George frowned. "The way she talked to Mum!"

"I thought Mum was going to clock her one!" Fred said, suddenly giggling.

"Well, Mai almost flung an uncooked steak at her," George chuckled, eyes twinkling as he grinned at Maia.

"Reacting the way we did to that _nasty_ surprise he sprung on us," Fred said thoughtfully, "I thought we were remarkably tame."

"You were very well-behaved," Maia nodded.

"People might think we've gone soft," George said, eyes widening.

"Well, Bill is a curse-breaker," Maia said, sitting up a little straighter. "I'm sure he picked up a thing or two in the pyramids that he can utilise if you do something, er, unsavoury to his new girlfriend."

"Good point," George frowned.

"We'll just have to go Black-Ops," Fred said thoughtfully. "Like Padfoot said, when we wanted do Percy in. We've got to do it _smart_."

"Everyone will know it was you two," Maia said drily.

"Not if we get Opal to claim it was her," Fred said, grinning.

"You'd put a five-year-old in Mrs Weasley's line of fire," Maia laughed incredulously. "You know she loves Bill more than she despises Delacour, she'd probably be angry that you'd caused Bill an upset with his girlfriend."

"They've barely just met!" Fred said, appalled. "She's not his…_girlfriend_."

"I reckon Mum wouldn't really care _how_ we got Bill shot of Fleur," George said thoughtfully.

"Just that we do," Fred nodded.

"If anyone deserved to have our joke-cosmetics gifted to her," George said slowly, and Fred sat up a little straighter, eyes widening as they got that _inspired_ look Maia now knew so well, "it'd be Fleur Delacour."

"George, mate, I was just thinking the exact same thing." Laughing ecstatically, Fred went to go and get another round of drinks for them.

"Speaking of cosmetics," George said, glancing at Maia, "have you been working on yours?"

"I've been playing with the packaging," Maia said, "but I've got the names for a collection of lip products."

"Oh yeah?" George grinned.

"Yeah. To keep things young and flirty, I thought, names like 'Skinny-Dip', 'All Tied Up', 'Topless', 'So Frisk Me!', 'Thigh High', 'After Sex' and 'Acting Out'," she grinned, and George laughed, his eyes twinkling.

"They'd certainly get people's attention," he said.

"I've actually been thinking about some different things," Maia said, biting her lip, with a subtle sigh. "Like a twist-up lip-colour that gives pigment and/or shimmer or high-gloss, with a bit of moisturiser, really easy application."

"Like a crayon?" George asked thoughtfully; they had had fun creating different special-effects crayons for Opal, now that they knew how to whip up batches of the base.

"Exactly—like a large, fat crayon, with a cap. Silky to apply…" Maia smiled at George. "I could only do three or four, my favourite lip-colours, a nude-blush with some shimmer, a glossy fuchsia, a true matte red…maybe a pretty, warm coral."

"Have you been working on those lip-glosses?" George asked: Ginny had asked Maia to create some pretty lip-glosses with shimmer or high-pigment, that didn't cause hair to stick to it in a breeze.

"I've been working on them—with flavours and _scents_," Maia beamed. Her favourite scents to use were tuberose, Fiawsberry Pear, lemon and freshly-baked hot-cross buns. "And I've been working on the nail-lacquers we learned how to make."

"It was all a bit complicated to get hues right for each skin-tone with lipsticks," George sighed. "I had no idea there were specific ranges of red _hues_ that went with each skin-tone. Porcelain; fair; olive; caramel; cocoa; copper; ebony." He shook his head, as Maia chuckled, rumpling his hair.

"Why are you so worried about red lipsticks?" Maia asked curiously. A few nights ago, the twins had barged into Maia's room while the girls tried out Maia's first attempt at nail-lacquer strips, and demanded makeovers. They had gathered all Maia's makeup, all Ginny's cosmetics and Mrs Weasley's lipsticks, rooted through Ailith's, Tonks' and Chummy's handbags, and had demanded a detailed and accurate description of each product's specific use.

"We're trying to find a red that works for _every_ skin-tone," George sighed, and Maia smiled.

"A joke lipstick?" Maia asked curiously.

"Yeah. We don't want it too dark, or too garish, or too orange," George sighed. Maia chuckled.

"You can have another look through my collection, if you want," she said.

"Actually, we liked that lipstick you always wear," George said. "It's got a really nice colour to it. It's _red-_red. Would you mind if we cut it up and used it to draw out the pigment?"

"Yes."

"Right. Thought you would."

"So are you having any luck with it?" Maia asked.

"Some," George nodded. "We've been thinking of putting some in the test-packs we've been putting together." Maia raised her eyebrows, glancing down at George as she sipped her sweating Butterbeer.

"What test-packs?" she asked. George took the bottle from her and took a sip of Butterbeer.

"Well, you know Chummy's got all those nieces and nephews? They're all magical, and Chum's the _epitome_ of the cool aunt," George said, grinning. "_We_ need to do market research, not just with our age-group but with the younger kids too, you know, the ones who're old enough to get stuff in their Christmas stockings to muck about with, but aren't old enough to go to Diagon Alley and buy stuff themselves? So we've put together bags of our products for Chummy to give to her nieces and nephews, one bag per family. We've asked them to give us feedback on what they really like, things they'd love to have gifted to them. Obviously, none of the things we give them will be harmful; they're nothing that would require magical supervision. Nothing that requires a wand. But we thought, they're already testing out the board-games, they might as well have a go with some of our other stuff."

"At the very least, it would get them excited for when you open the shop," Maia said thoughtfully.

"Exactly." George paused thoughtfully, then said, "Girls really like smelly things, don't they."

"Hark who's talking, king of the stink-pellets!" Maia laughed.

"Well, alright, girls like _pretty_-smelling things," George amended, with a sweet smile.

"They do; I _love_ those scented nail-lacquers," Maia said. "Muggle nail-polishes smell _awful_ because they're made from chemicals." Fred came over carrying another three Butterbeers.

"The nail-polish Ginny was wearing today," Fred said. "She's got a different pattern on each finger; did you come up with the colours?"

"Yeah, they were the ones I made at Madam Primpernelle's," Maia nodded. "I've been experimenting with nail-lacquer strips. Different colours, different patterns, incredibly easy application. But using the nail-lacquer shades I came up with. I'll show you later," she added, when the twins looked bemused.

"How many have you come up with?" George asked.

"Nail-lacquers? I've ground and mixed the pigments for quite a few different shades," Maia admitted.

"Have you got sexy names for them, too?" George asked, his lips twitching as his eyes twinkled.

"Not…really," Maia said, smiling, with a little chuckle. "I took a lot of the hues from my fairytale illustrations. I thought of doing a collection of lacquers and lip-glosses to market alongside my _Twelve Dancing Princesses_ book, one shade to match each of the princesses, plus a silver lacquer, and a gold one, and two iridescent shimmer lacquers to choose from. And a top-coat that sparkles like diamonds."

"Why don't you do a handful of lacquers for each fairytale?" George mused.

"What, like a duo of special shades?" Maia pondered the idea. "I suppose I could do two colours based on each fairytale's colour-palette."

"You could even do the Hogwarts House colours," Fred remarked.

"Well, Ginny's asked me to do some nail-wraps with the Gryffindor colours and crest," Maia said thoughtfully.

"You could use the Quidditch League colours," George grinned, and Maia laughed, then quieted, thoughtful.

"I could do…"

"If you were to apply for an umbrella licence to use the Quidditch League colours for your merchandise, you'd save money," George remarked thoughtfully.

"Yeah," Maia murmured, smiling. "Actually, I had a thought about using the League colours. I've been thinking…perhaps we should collaborate."

"If that's what the kids are calling it these days," George grinned, and Maia couldn't help mirroring him as she laughed, pinching his waist and making him giggle and writhe beneath her. She _loved_ sitting in his lap. She felt so small, and…safe, comfortable. She liked it when he splayed his big hand on her hip, to keep her in place in his lap. She liked the way he'd nestle his head against her, her arm wrapped around his broad shoulders, when he was thinking, or relaxed.

"What were you thinking?" George asked curiously.

"Well…like those test-packs," Maia said, smiling as he tightened his arm around her waist, casually, readjusting her in his lap. "You know that First Aid kit I keep in my bag?"

"I didn't think nail-polish, a hankie, lip-balm, a safety-pin and pain-killers constituted a First Aid kit?" George teased, smiling.

"Well, maybe not to anyone who's left school," Maia shrugged. "But, clear nail-polish can stop a run in tights from growing; you should always have a handkerchief; safety-pins can take the place of buttons on a skirt; and you should always have something to alleviate headaches and cramps. I thought about putting together a sort of…well, gender- and age-specific First Aid kits that include some of your products, like Skiving Snackbox sweets, and something to get rid of spots, and a bottle of that clear nail-polish that _heals_ torn and cracked nails. And I've thought about my friend, who uses her contact-lens case to put touch-up makeup in when she goes out, because the little case fits into a tiny clutch-purse, so if I thought I when I develop that foundation I wanted to work on, and a blush or cheek-tint, I could do little touch-up kits for makeup. With little mini bottles of cheek-stain and gloss."

"How does that tie in with Quidditch League colours?" Fred asked.

"Well, I thought about the packaging. I thought the girls' ones could be put in one of those little zippered clutch-purses I made for myself. At first I thought I could use inexpensive materials, like faux dragon-hide, and patterned cotton or beaded velvet, then I thought, what about using the League colours?

"Oh, _Maia_," George moaned, and Maia glanced down; before she could react he had squeezed her in a huge hug. "To think we were afraid you'd be Hermione Mark Two." Maia laughed. "What do you think, Fred?"

"Keep going," Fred said to Maia, looking excited.

"Well, I was thinking, not everyone knows healing and cleaning charms, so we could put in a pot of stain-remover, you know, something really good, that could get out dirt and grass-stains, and blood; maybe a healing potion with dittany to prevent scarring, with cotton-balls; we could even produce some of that…I've forgotten the name, the potion that helps you stay awake and increases your concentration," Maia said.

"I _like_ that," Fred grinned. "When you mean 'First Aid' kits, you mean the kinds of emergencies kids and teenagers get at school."

"Exactly. And for the older set, teenagers and young-adults, you could even put in… A bottle that contains enough contraceptive potion; and hangover cures; sunburn-healing balms. Things that would be really handy if you went to a weekend festival," Maia added thoughtfully, and the twins grinned.

"We could put together kits for the new generation of first-years," George said, and Fred grinned.

"Exactly," Maia beamed. "Quills, alongside Skiving Snackboxes, spare ink, stink-pellets."

"A good balance between practical and prank-material," Fred nodded approvingly.

"Can I ask you something?" Maia said, after a little while.

"Of course."

"When you were in second-year, you chose your supplemental classes?" Maia said. "The ones not required."

"We did."

"Did you already have the idea for the joke-shop then?" she asked.

"We'd had inklings in that direction," George nodded.

"So did you choose your extra classes with that in mind?" Maia asked.

"Well, no," George said.

"We chose Divination, Ancient Runes and George took Care of Magical Creatures," Fred said.

"For the tea—"

"And the naps."

"And the nogtails to set on Kenneth."

"You two didn't decide to split the classes, so you could each specialise in something and have a broader study-base?"

"Well, by third-year, we'd figured out that what we wanted was to open the joke-shop—" George began.

"For definite, not just an idea—"

"So we decided to focus and fine-tune our education—"

"We dropped Astronomy, Divination and Care of Magical Creatures," George said.

"We're just focusing on the core subjects."

"The ones we actually use."

"And since some professors won't let us go up to the N.E.W.T. level with our O.W.L. marks, we have more free lessons," Fred said happily. "Hey, Maia, we've been wanting to ask you about those Puffskeins in the playroom."

"What about them?" Maia asked warily. _Where did that come from_?

"You can never tell them apart, especially the gender?" Fred prompted.

"Right."

"Well, we thought…Opal loves them; so does Ginny," George said, smiling.

"And Crookshanks," Maia said drily; it wasn't uncommon to see Crookshanks, his bushy tail flicking, as he sat in front of the cage of Puffskeins, freaking out the little custard-coloured balls of fluff.

"And Chummy took two to give to her nieces," Fred said.

"You want to _breed_ them," Maia said, cottoning on.

"Breed them in colour-coded _miniatures_," George specified.

"Miniatures?"

"Pygmy Puffs," Fred grinned. "Pink or purple, depending on gender—"

"And the colour would get darker the older the Pygmy Puff gets," George said.

"Yeah, so you know when it's dead or not," Fred smirked.

"It can be difficult to tell sometimes," George sighed, and Maia remembered their story about Sid the failed Bludger-Puffskein in the _Talon_.

"How are you going to do that? Breed them, I mean?" Maia wondered.

"Well, we thought we'd each take one to Hogwarts as a pet," George said.

"And let them go at it," Fred smirked.

"How will you make sure you've got a male and a female?" Maia asked.

"Is that how it works?" George asked, wide-eyed, making her laugh, rumpling his hair, playing with his ear to make him writhe and grin. "So, why did you ask about us choosing our classes? Are you thinking about what you'll sign up for?"

"Well, sort of," Maia sighed. "I'm already studying Arithmancy, Astronomy and Ancient Runes by owl, sending the professors essays. The professors say I'm at N.E.W.T.-standard because of Diane teaching me for so long. And the core subjects, Professor Dumbledore said the professors can test me at the end of the summer to see if I'm up to the same standard as kids going into O.W.L.-year."

"So you're wondering what other subjects are left for you?" George asked.

"Yeah. Arithmancy and Ancient Runes are the two most difficult subjects, and I've already got them under my belt. I don't really fancy Care of Magical Creatures, and Muggle Studies sounds like a _complete_ joke. And I had too many years of Diane slipping into discussions about astrology and cosmology to enjoy Divination."

"You could be a Seer and never know it," George said.

"Hey," Fred said suddenly, inspiration illuminating his freckled face. "I've just had a _thought_."

"Careful," Maia smirked.

"All we need is Opal and a turban," Fred said, and George laughed, grinning.

"Sherlock?" he asked, and Fred nodded, grinning.

"I knew I shouldn't have let you two watch that film."

"In our defence, Crookshanks didn't have any objections," Fred said.

"I suppose those scratch-marks all over your arms and face where he'd tried to escape from you were 'love-stripes'?" Maia asked drily.

"Hydrated rhododendron?" Fred said, ignoring her. "Who would've thought Muggles knew a bit about the mystical side-effects of consuming specific flowers."

"Well, some of wizards' wisdom must've leaked into Muggle awareness before the International Statute of Secrecy," Maia sighed.

"How're you going to go into History of Magic O.W.L., by the way?" George asked.

"Professor Marchbanks said I could sit an exam with her at the end of the summer if I wanted to get the N.E.W.T. out of the way. I've done a lot of the essay-titles Professor Binns assigned Padfoot."

"Marchbanks examined Mum and Dad when they were at school," Fred said, eyes wide.

"And Professor Dumbledore," George said. "She must be _ancient_."

"I think she was a friend of my aunt's," Maia said thoughtfully. "She seemed very upset when I told her Diane was…" She trailed off with a sigh, her shoulders slumping. George squeezed her to him, and she sighed again, gazing at her bottle as she peeled the label off.

"D'you know, we brought you out to stop you working, and all we've done since we've been here is talk about business and school," Fred laughed softly, a little later.

"You're absolutely right," Maia nodded. She fixed Fred with a look. "So. Fred. Are you seeing anyone?" Laughing, they started bantering, trying to think of anything to talk about besides joke-products, lipstick, wirelesses, Puffskeins or anything to do with Hogwarts lessons, finishing up their Butterbeers. A couple of casual drinks in a sociable atmosphere with a bowl of chips was the way Maia liked to have a drink; especially in the heat, spending time with the twins, it was wonderful to just spend a few hours chatting, enjoying the sun and a nice drink, chatting with strangers, laughing.

"You know, I've been thinking," George said, running his finger along her inner-forearm, making her shiver. "Those recipe-cards you've been working on? Why don't you put together a cookbook?"

"Me?" Maia smiled. She had thought of it, of course, the idea of the recipe-cards had evolved from the concept of a cookbook being too ambitious a challenge.

"Thing is, a lot of kids leave Hogwarts without knowing basic survival skills—washing their own knickers, ironing their best robes, _cooking_," Fred said. "Mum had to give Charlie a crash-course in simple recipes before he went off to Romania."

"Romanians have a wonderful food-culture," Maia said thoughtfully.

"Right—Charlie's got a bit into bread-making," George nodded.

"Well, from the photograph you showed me of your brother, Charlie definitely has the muscle for it," Maia mused. Charlie Weasley was so freckled he looked permanently tanned, and had arms like great rippling pythons, with burns on his arms and calloused palms. The Weasley kids had written him a letter, asking him to contribute something on dragon-keeping to _The Talon_. "Those _arms_…"

"Anyway," George said, frowning slightly. "A lot of the things you've been cooking for us, you don't use magic. So anyone can cook them, even if they don't have a handle on culinary spells. I really liked those Rachel Khoo shows Padfoot made us watch."

"You really liked _Rachel Khoo_," Maia corrected, and George shrugged, with a handsome grin.

"Well, I thought, why don't you create a cookbook for kids leaving Hogwarts?" George said. "You know, simple recipes for really good food."

"Stuff _we_ could cook if we were trying to impress a girl," Fred remarked.

"Yeah, or prove to Mum we're capable of taking care of ourselves so she'd let us move out," George said, and Maia smirked, laughing. George pinched her waist, making her thrash; settling his big hand on her hip, he held her in place in his lap. "_We're _not the ones who constantly have to remind ourselves not to taste-test potions."

Maia rolled her eyes, grinning. "It's not my fault. Cooking was indoctrinated into me at an early age."

"Exactly, and you've got a tonne of recipes that you know by heart," George said. "We could create a little kitchen in—_hey_, we could set up your camping-stove and that miniature oven in the _Talon_ Office! You could put on your red lippie, I could do all the photography—and we can both eat the finished products."

"So that's why you want me to put together a cookbook—you just want me to feed you," Maia said, raising an eyebrow.

"Not _entirely_," George said. "I think those recipe-cards are a fab idea. Especially since they're all unusual and exotic recipes. I appreciate Mum's cooking, but it's nice to have some variation from steak-and-kidney puddings and stews, especially with this weather. Anyway, you've been pouting about the kitchen being too big. Hand control over to Kreacher, and you can just content yourself with feeding me and Fred."

"Why would you waste your time photographing me cooking?" Maia asked George curiously.

"Well, we are primarily a joke-shop," George said, "but this summer is being a bit of an eye-opener for us."

"We realised that we wouldn't be living with Mum and Dad forever," Fred said, with wide eyes.

"After wrapping our heads around that, we had the sudden, horrifying thought that we'd have to cook for ourselves and wash our own knickers," George said, and Maia smirked, giggling softly.

"So, we wondered if we shouldn't expand to a line of items that aren't specifically _jokes_, but which the young-professional clientele might appreciate. Like self-stirring mixing-bowls, or self-warming bowls for your soup, and then we thought of Opal, decorating those biscuits you made her," Fred said, with a growing grin, and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. "You know you can get Hiccough Sweets, and sweets that make you sprout daffodils from your nose?"

"Yeah…"

"We thought, it'd be fun to do a line of sugar decorations for cakes and biscuits," George grinned, "with _special_ _effects_."

"Can you imagine whipping up a batch of cookies and then letting Opal get creative with a load of different decorations," Fred grinned. "And then watch the effects when she took a bite out of them!" So excited over just the idea, Fred clapped his hands and giggled, fidgeting in his seat.

Maia sat up straighter, her eyes glinting. "Forget Opal. Let me do that to _Padfoot_!" She threw her head back and roared at the thought of Sirius taking a huge mouthful of Black Forest gateau with special-effects. She sobered, chuckling, and smiled, "You'd have to test all of the different toppings, for any potential side-effects when they're consumed together."

"That's what we thought," George said, giggling.

"Which is where you come in," Fred said, grinning.

"Oh. Right. You don't know how to cook."

"And how're we supposed to coerce Opal to decorate and try out cookies if we don't actually have said edibles to offer?" Fred said.

"Why don't you just buy some?"

"They're not as nice," George said, pouting thoughtfully.

"Besides, we can get them from you for free," Fred remarked.

"Nothing's for free," Maia said quietly.

George sighed heavily just then. "You're right… We'll just have to give ourselves to you in payment." Maia choked on her Butterbeer, spluttering and laughing as she struggled for breath, wiping Butterbeer from her chin as George patted her back.

"Are you trying to put me off?" she choked laughingly. George pinched her, and Maia squirmed, laughing richly.

"Do you want us to have to beg?" Fred asked, eyes wide. "Because George will."

"I'm sure he would," Maia said saucily, and George chuckled deeply. He caught her eye and held it, a warm smile emanating from those twinkling sapphire depths.

From the evidence, no fewer than a dozen different love-potions she was creating packaging artwork for, she knew the twins were skilled at brewing love-potions. And, over the past fortnight, had taken sheer delight in testing them on unwitting houseguests in Number Twelve.

_Unfortunately_, Maia knew they hadn't slipped her one.

Despite that, the suddenness of a very strong friendship with George, a bond and an intense chemistry when they were alone, had her…thinking about him. A lot. Dreaming, too. Sometimes she woke up from intense dreams and had to take the edge off, uncomfortable. For all she was nearly sixteen, about two years ago she had discovered where she liked to touch herself, and her entire body responded to thoughts of or nearness to George. Sitting in his lap like this was thrilling her.

Maia had had a few boyfriends before, casual relationships confined to the school grounds, kissing against cold brick walls, or in the darkness of parties at peoples' houses. She loved flirting, and _kissing_. She had been too young to maintain the kind of relationship she craved from reading those _Immortals After Dark _novels (which George was making his way through) and far too young to enter into any kind of sexual relationship. She had never been able to get _close_ to a boy, the way she had always wanted to before she did anything like that.

But she _liked_ _George_. Everything about him excited her, thrilled her, made her embrace everything with an enthusiasm that couldn't be vanquished. She…she really came into herself when she was around him, as if he unconsciously was coaxing her to be the very best she could be. Every time they went out—which was nearly every night, especially if Mrs Weasley was out—either to the incredibly fun, boisterous dances, or going to watch a live band, or even just a wander to Florean Fortescue's for an ice-cream, or the fish-and-chip shop, they didn't stop talking, or flirting; and she _loved_ dancing with George. He and Fred were two of a kind, enthusiastic and boisterous beyond imagining, and neither could stand to see some poor girl sitting glumly at the little tables, dragging her onto the dance-floor.

The others couldn't possibly have not seen the way she and George flirted with each other shamelessly, or the way they would curl up close in the evenings to chat, or watch a film, sharing a paint-set, or a drink, but nobody had said anything, even just giggly, teasing suspicions, or asked her outright whether something was going on between them, or whether she suspected George might…like her, or whether she liked him.

She was just so _comfortable_ with him, even as he thrilled her, made her shiver whenever he touched her. She could sit in his lap for hours, and she enjoyed it now, resting her chin lightly on the top of his head as he hugged her, cheek resting against her collarbone; she threaded her fingers through his rich red hair, and sighed softly.

"Let's have a look at that." Having been fiddling absently with her pocket-wireless in one hand, George handed it over to Fred, who took it and examined it carefully, eyes sparkling, smiling. "This is great!"

"Thank you… I thought I'd make one up to give to Harry for an early birthday-present from me and Padfoot," Maia said, "you know, to make his time at the Dursleys' a little more bearable before we get him out."

"Shouldn't he be on his way soon?" Fred asked.

"I think so. Padfoot wants him here before his birthday, if the Order can manage it," Maia murmured.

"Why before?"

"Well…to give Harry a proper birthday-party," Maia said, sighing sadly. She'd never had one either. The closest she'd come to experiencing a birthday-party was going to other children's when she was little. "And he's getting restless in Little Whinging. His family just _ignore_ him."

"Poor bloke," Fred sighed, "stuck in that house. I don't know why Dumbledore makes him go back every summer. Mum and Dad would've taken him in—"

"In a heartbeat," George said, tutting softly; he had his hand curled over Maia's thigh, rubbing his thumb over the denim hem of her dress and her hot skin. "I hope they kept those bars off his window, after we ripped them off with Dad's car."

"He's allowed out, now," Maia sighed. "Harry told me he spends most of his time wandering around Little Whinging. I can always find him at the park, whenever I stop in to deliver food."

"His aunt's still pushing everyone on a diet?" George said, frowning.

"Yeah," Maia sighed.

"Took us ages to develop those Ton-Tongue Toffees," Fred said vaguely.

"We'll have to get them back into production."

"Definitely. Maybe we can put some in those test-packs we've been putting together," Fred said; Maia smiled, chin perched on George's head. She loved the smell of his hair, freshly-washed, with just a hint of gunpowder and some of the sweeter potion ingredients the twins used.

"Could you create the Ton-Tongue Toffees as Skiving Snackboxes?" Maia wondered thoughtfully.

"How'd you work it as an illness, having a four-foot-long tongue?" Fred said, eyebrows raised. Maia thought about it.

"What about Tonsillitis?" she said, raising her eyebrows at Fred. George glanced up, dislodging her chin, and grinned up at her, eyes sparkling.

"Now that's a good idea," he said softly. "You have to be careful though, you might get a few days in the hospital wing for that if Pomfrey heard about it."

"You loved having Tonsillitis!" Fred grinned back.

"You've had Tonsillitis?"

"Yeah," George said, sighing contentedly. "'Course, Madam Pomfrey severs your tonsils no problem, you don't even feel it. She just likes fussing, so she made me stay in bed for four days, being served pudding with dinner _and_ lunch. It was great."

"So you wouldn't be able to test the sweets," Maia said, threading her fingertips through his hair.

"No," George sighed, then shot his twin a sparkling grin.

"Oh _no_," Fred pouted, grimacing.

"You had George black and blue over those Fainting Fancies," Maia reminded him. "Only two _lads_ wouldn't think to put cushions down."

"Hey, have we told you?" George said, glancing up at Maia. "We've decided to increase our Snackbox range to things like drops."

"Drops?"

"Yeah—we thought, how do we get Mum to stop having a go, get her out of the way for a few hours, without, y'know, actually _hexing_ her," Fred said, and Maia chuckled.

"So we thought about something you could slip into her wine," George said.

"Just a few drops, she'd go into a dead faint."

"Move her up to her room, close the door—"

"You're free to do whatever you'd like for a few hours, until the effects wear off."

"That's quite cruel," she said, glancing at Fred, even though she was smiling. "Would you like me to do that to you?"

"Depends what you'd do with me while I was out," George said, with a saucy grin.

"Whereabouts do those Acrumantula live in the Forbidden Forest?" she asked, fluttering her eyelashes sweetly. George pouted, eyes widening adorably.

"You'd turn me into spider-bait?!" Maia shrugged, grinning lazily.

"You know, if you were to put together sets of your products, you could sell them as gift-packs," Maia said thoughtfully. "If you put a variety of different products in a nice—or hexed—container, and marketed them at a bargain price, you'd sell out of them at Christmas. Family-members could just choose one that's in their price-range, buy up a load and give them to their younger nieces and nephews and grandkids. It's always difficult to know what to buy."

"That's very true," Fred nodded.

"Christmas in the Weasley clan is a nightmare," George sighed.

"We usually get underwear," Fred said grumpily, and Maia laughed.

"Can't imagine _why_," she said, eyebrows raised innocently.

"We could do them already gift-wrapped…especially when it's Christmastime," George said thoughtfully. "We could use those scented, special-effects papers we were working on…"

"We could put in travel-versions of our board-games," Fred said excitedly, eyes sparkling.

"Yeah—and Christmas crackers!" George blurted suddenly, eyes wide, grinning. "Hell, why specify, they could be Christmas _or_ birthday-crackers."

"Hats, _bubbles_!"

"Maybe a Skiving Snackbox apiece."

"Some other little things, like the moustache—"

"Yeah! And we could even do girls' and boys' ones. Joke-cosmetics for the girls—"

"—and fireworks, stink-pellets for the boys."

"And we've got a surplus of jokes to share with the world."

"Best test them on Mum for age-appropriateness." Maia smirked, even as she watched delightedly as the twins bounced ideas off each other, wide eyed and ecstatic at the sudden burst of inspiration.

"Hey, we could put in things you've made, Maia," George said, glancing up at her.

"Me?"

"Yeah, remember those friendship-bracelets you've been teaching Opal how to make?" George said.

"Yeah—we could charm them," Fred grinned mischievously.

"And those nail-lacquers you've been working on, any of them have particularly special effects?" George asked.

"Some," Maia nodded. "If I'd had my diary on me I'd've shown you—different colour glow-in-the-dark, one that's scented like Amortentia, you know, with whatever attracts you most, and one that glows radiantly, like the _Talon_ badges I made…another sparkles like diamonds in intense sunshine, and I've been thinking about lacquer that glitters like fireworks. Oh, and I've been working on cosmetic transfers for the face, things like the Gryffindor lion and the Hufflepuff crest."

"To wear during Quidditch matches," George grinned.

"Exactly."

"Maybe we could do a combination, non-joke products with our best kiddie stuff," Fred said thoughtfully. "It'd get them wondering what'd happen when they use each thing."

"_Always_ play with their minds," Maia said, nodding.

"If we worked on those special-effects cake decorations, we could put little vials of them in the crackers," George said thoughtfully.

"I reckon, if we were to concert our not inconsiderable brains to whip up a load of stuff, it'd be well worth our time to help you out with your makeup," Fred said, glancing at Maia.

"Yeah, maybe we can stock the shop," George nodded.

"We're still a bit lacking when it comes to serving the fairer sex," Fred said, and Maia smirked; he reached out to swat her backside.

"You walked into that one," Maia chuckled richly.

"I reckon we've been a bad influence on you," George said thoughtfully, as Maia laughed.

"Nah. You've just been helping me get back to normal," Maia said quietly, peeling the label from her Butterbeer bottle. It wasn't easy, being exactly who she was when she was amongst strangers—because they didn't know who she was, and being completely new to everything, she hadn't exactly been herself for the first few weeks. She had a dirty sense of humour, was a bit _weird_, staggeringly clever, prone to bouts of insomnia, tireless, and…and she was missing the person who had made her who she was.

The twins would've kept Diane breathless and crying with laughter. And Maia was who she was because of Diane—and was coming to realise she was more like Diane than she had thought. Over the last few weeks, she had come to realise that she was herself an eccentric. She hadn't just been raised by and then taken care of one.

Diane would say she was a _character_.

The twins were_ definitely_ characters!

And Maia had never felt more comfortable in herself than spending time with the twins.

She had never felt more comfortable in herself than in this _world_.

"Reckon we should head back?" Fred asked, his face turned to the sun, basking like a lizard. He and George would have even more freckles by the time they turned in for bed tonight.

"Yeah, why not?" George yawned. "We've got work to do."

"Oh really?"

"We've got to set up the _Talon_ Office with a kitchen," George said, smiling up at her, "and we can help you plan the recipes for your cookbook."

"And we should start on those First Aid kits you thought of," Fred remarked. "I really like that idea."

"We could start putting together gift-boxes," George said, glancing at his twin. "See what goes, the costing…"

Having paid upfront for their Butterbeers and the bowl of chips they had shared to soak up the alcohol, they left their table in the beer-garden, and due to having no shoes, when George offered, Maia accepted a piggyback ride back to Diagon Alley.

As they arrived on the doorstep, chatting energetically about the contents for party-crackers, piñatas and Maia's idea for makeup kits (based on _Benefit Cosmetics_' sets Maia had adored), as well as the possibility of Maia creating an exclusive _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes'_ pocket-wireless for them to have set to _Radio Rock_ in their shop, George paused, yawning, as Fred knocked.

"You know," George said, chuckling, as Maia finished telling him about her _Lip Glass_ product—a special-effects lip-gloss that stayed put, drying to a velvety-smooth feel with a high gloss shine like polished glass; she had created concepts for four and was working diligently on them—"I think we should all be committed."

"I couldn't agree more," Sirius said, answering the door. "Or I could just ground you for kidnapping my niece."

"It was with purely dishonourable intentions, Sirius, we assure you," George smirked, and Maia laughed.

"Yeah, we've had a tonne of major breakthroughs," Fred grinned.

"We find Maia intrinsic to the creative process," George nodded, letting Maia climb down from his back after releasing his hook-like hold under her knees.

"I see. Are we going to have another demonstration of your Skiving Snackboxes tonight?" Sirius asked.

"Why, Phlegm's not back?" Fred grimaced, appalled.

"No, she's not," Sirius said, lips twitching. "But Molly and Arthur are out for a drink with some old school-friends."

"Legend!" Fred and George grinned.

"In that case," George grinned.

"—we just might treat you—"

"And we can poll Hermione and Ginny."

"Are Tonks and Ailith here?"

"Ales is getting us drinks," Sirius said, as he locked the front-door. "Tonks said she'd drop by later. Why?"

"Well, as we've said, we've had ideas," Fred grinned.

"Oh dear," Sirius sighed, lips twitching again.

"It's nothing bad," George assured him, smiling. "Brilliant, actually. Them alone in our advertisements… As long as we can put them together before the summer ends…" Sirius glanced from Maia to the twins and back.

"Is that it? You're not going to give me anything else?"

"These are top-secret workings!" Fred gasped softly. "You didn't tell anyone about the Marauder's Map while you were working on it, did you?!"

"Fair point," Sirius grinned.

"Why don't we work down in the den, since your mum's out?" Maia suggested, as Sirius bolted the door behind them.

"And how about you all have an early night for once despite your mum and dad being out," Sirius suggested, giving Maia a look of mild concern. He thought she didn't get enough sleep.

"Well, Madam Primpernelle's did wipe me out," Maia yawned, groaning as she stretched her arms. She could feel the sun she had caught, sitting out in the beer-garden.

"Oh yeah? Want to show Ginny what you've made?" Sirius smiled. "You know she'll glom onto you for them."

"We could put our ideas to parchment in the den," Fred said. "We need your input, and all."

"Oh _really_?" Sirius said, highly interested; in another life, he had probably been Loki.

"Yep," George nodded.

"You want to watch a film?" Sirius asked.

"I am_ not_ watching _Summer Lovers_ with you again, Sirius," Fred exclaimed. Maia smirked, chuckling.

"It's girls' choice tonight," said a voice, and Ailith smiled as she entered the hall, bearing two little glasses of Maia's cider; she handed one to Sirius, who smiled warmly at her. "Tonks hasn't seen _Willy_ _Wonka_."

"Despicable," Maia sighed, shaking her head. Sirius and Ailith trailed off to the library, where Maia heard them chuckling and talking quietly, their conversation punctuated with the odd _thunk_ as they cast books into dustbin bags.

"How long's that been going on?" George asked quietly, as they made their way upstairs.

"Those two? They've seemed pretty cosy the last few weeks," Maia said, glancing over the banister as they made their way around the gallery.

"Why d'you reckon they like each other?" George said thoughtfully, as if he had said the question aloud but wasn't really expecting an answer. Maia wondered, too.

"I've been thinking about it," she said quietly. "Remus says that, well, before his imprisonment, Sirius was incredibly brave; he's _very_ smart, and very talented…and he's lonely."

"Ailith's very beautiful," George said thoughtfully. "I don't mean just in appearance; she's lovely."

"And she has a sense of humour, even if she's _serene_," Maia said.

"That's it—she _is_ serene," George said, glancing at her. "I couldn't think what the word was…"

"And Sirius escaped Azkaban to protect Harry," Fred said, glancing over his shoulder at them as he mounted the stairs. "I mean, talk about dedication!"

"I reckon if people knew the whole truth, Sirius would be on the cover of _Witch Weekly_ for years," George said, chuckling. "Not just that it was Harry he escaped to protect; I reckon any bloke who escaped an inescapable prison to protect a kid he hadn't seen in twelve years would have all the ladies swooning over him."

"Especially since he's been taking those Rejuvenation Drafts to help reverse the effects of the Dementors," Fred smirked. Maia had been slipping the Rejuvenation Draft to Sirius, on Mrs Weasley's advice, not wanting to injure Sirius' fragile mental state over the physical side-effects of his imprisonment. He hated being reminded that he had lost twelve years of his life.

"Sirius _is_ a bit of a dish," Maia smirked.

"You and him, I don't know; your family must be unusually blessed with good genes," George said, glancing at her. "_And_ Tonks is related to you. A Metamorphmagus—and _pretty_, even when she's her normal appearance. She says you look a lot like her mum, so Andromeda must be a bit of alright."

"Yes, but we're also related to people like that Malfoy family," Maia said. Remembering a conversation with Neville in the greenhouse on Friday, when Professor Sprout had bustled off to do something else, leaving them alone, she added, "And Bellatrix Lestrange."

"Right," Fred frowned. "That's a bit of a drawback."

"Mm," Maia agreed. Realising that Maia was distant cousins with the woman who had tortured his parents to insanity had been the first and only blip in her burgeoning friendship with Neville: he had found her name on the tapestry in the drawing-room and gotten very upset that he was living in the house in which Bellatrix had once visited her aunt and uncle.

"You know, I reckon everyone, back then, must've thought Sirius had gone the way of the rest of his family," Fred said thoughtfully, as they mounted the attic staircase, Maia drawing the mirror to behind her. "You know, Dark wizards, Death Eaters."

"And nobody would've contradicted it," George added. "All that effort people like Malfoy put into pretending they'd been bullied and bewitched into helping You-Know-Who, no one would've said, 'Um, actually, I never saw Sirius Black at any of our clandestine meetings, plotting to take over the world and murder little baby-boys'."

"Well, whether or not he betrayed Lily and James, Sirius still has to live with the guilt that he suggested Wormtail as Secret Keeper," Maia sighed. "He still thinks it's his fault."

"You know," George said quietly, as Fred clattered into the workshop, "I still remember, when we were really little, Mum used to cry a lot. I think she went a bit…mad with grief, after my uncles were killed. They were her only brothers. But at least she didn't have to deal with that grief in Azkaban. I can't even imagine…" Glancing at Maia, George smiled. "It's good that Sirius might have Ailith."

"I know," Maia smiled at him. Gazing at her warmly, George smiled.

"So how long d'you reckon it'll take for them to get together?" he asked.

"Depends how much of my cider they drink tonight," Maia said, and George laughed, leading her by the hand into the workshop.

"Right!" Fred exclaimed, punting the doors shut with his foot before frowning into the workshop, hands on his hips. "We need a pot of coffee, twelve _Jammy_ _Dodgers_—"

"—and a fez," Maia grinned. Fred winked.

"We do need something to drink, though," George said. "It's a bit hot in here." He flicked his wand, the tall, narrow windows opening with a soft click of the latch, and as Fred tugged a stool over to the end of the worktable, which was left clear to gift-wrap owl-orders or test out the board-games or spread workbooks so recipes could be followed for invented potions, George disappeared with a _crack_.

He reappeared with a flagon of Butterbeer, six rolls and a plate of Maia's treats for them to help themselves to. The twins had to tend to a potion they had left simmering while at the _Sunflower_, so Maia retrieved her diamond-weave basket from her bedroom, with her paints, her diary and the basket of things she and the twins had worked on today at _Madam Primpernelle's_. Today's haul included dermatological potions, toners, cleansers, facial scrubs, moisturiser, primer, foundation, concealer and finishing-powders. Maia could now really get stuck in with her ideas for cosmetics, thrilled that she could add scents and special effects to the things she was dreaming up—like foaming pearls in a cleansing facial-wash that incorporated a gentle spot-clearing potion and moisturiser, scented beautifully with whatever she desired; or a stick-concealer, silky and perfectly blend-able and reflecting the natural skin-tone, with moisturiser incorporated and a low-concentration spot-healer; and a beautifully-scented sugar facial scrub that actually worked to clear blemishes and moisturise the skin.

Ginny loved going through the fruits of Maia's and the twins' labours whenever they came back from a session at _Madam Primpernelle's_. She had already requested Maia work on eye-shadows, a healing nail-lacquer and Maia herself wanted to create a very lightweight mascara that curled and lengthened lashes, as well as a soft rose-gold bronzer with all the sun she was getting. Maia and the twins used Ginny, Hermione, Ailith and Tonks for their primary research, trying to figure out what the average under-thirties witch wanted from her cosmetics—joke or otherwise—and one of the things Maia was working on was a soft-bristled pen-brush, which removed stray specks of liquid eyeliner, leaving shadow and primer intact.

The twins wanted to know what kinds of joke-cosmetics Chummy would love to gift her nieces or sisters, or the things their brothers would give their sisters as a 'treat', and were setting about creating a line of products to cater to Chummy's highly-developed sense of mischief. Including that red-red lipstick they didn't want to be too garish or too orange, that went with every skin-tone.

"You know," she said, observing the twins working on their potion, "we're both trying to create a perfect red lipstick. We just want to do different things with it."

"So?" Fred asked.

"Well, why don't we work together?" Maia asked. "The end product will be entirely different, so neither of us could claim in the future that the other had copied the formula."

"It might be easier, all of us working together, instead of struggling on our own," George said thoughtfully.

"What do you want to do with yours?" Fred asked.

"Make it non-smear, the perfect red that suits every skin-tone, and comes off completely clean with the makeup-remover I'm working on," Maia said, shrugging slightly. "I'm not even going to ask what you two are going to get up to with your version."

"Just don't accept any gifts of lipstick from anyone who could possibly know about Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes," Fred said, and Maia chuckled.

"You nearly ready to go down?" she asked, watching the twins.

"Nearly," George said, licking his lips thoughtfully as he held up a vial of potion sample, wearing a pair of gloves and his Quidditch goggles. And one of Maia's floral aprons. "Just got to check…" he continued, emptying the contents of the vial into a metal baking-tray Fred had frozen. Maia watched the potion spill out onto the iced metal, turning from luminous, iridescent, translucent rose to ebony, glittering with tiny pinpricks of light. "Yeah, that's done."

"Brilliant, let's bottle that—you don't mind, Maia?" Fred said, and Maia shook her head, busy with her diary on the sofa in the corner—set there for that exact purpose, with a pile of blankets and soft cushions.

"Where's the funnel?"

"Over there. Make sure and _Scourgify_ it first."

"I know!"

Maia watched George carefully ladle the luminous rose-pink potion into squat grenade-shaped bottles made of pink-tinted glass. From her commissions to do artwork for their products, Maia knew this bottle contained one of their dozen love-potions. When he was finished doling out the potion, Fred washed out the empty cauldron and George stopped the bottles with pinkish-platinum stoppers and boxed them so they could be set into one of the storage-cupboards, out of the way.

A few days ago, the twins had taken Maia's completed commissions for their love-potion packaging and posters to the small printer's in Diagon Alley, yesterday receiving the finished order.

Given what they had told her of their covert postage services, Maia had given them a curious glance, and the twins had explained, "Outside term-time we're not worried about concealing the love-potions as other things."

"And not all our customer-base for the love-potions are Hogwarts girls," Fred smirked.

"I don't understand that," Maia said softly. "Why would anyone use a love-potion. I mean, really _use_ it? Not to just pull a prank?"

"You'd be surprised," Fred said, glancing at her.

"Yeah, few people are as pretty or smart as you, Mai," George said, his voice a combination of sadness and smiling admiration.

"Right!" Fred grinned, as he set the empty cauldron on the sideboard, ready to be used for another potion. "That's that. You ready to go downstairs, Maia?"

She took hold of her diamond-weave basket, George grabbed his workbook, Fred provided refreshed glasses of Butterbeer before Apparating with the empty side-plates downstairs, and they met him in the den, where nearly everyone was gathered to listen to the last of the Jack's late-afternoon broadcast, occupied by their various hobbies, and Maia and the twins claimed one of the sofas after unceremoniously tipping Ginny off by lifting the back of the sofa so she tumbled onto the floor.

Maia worked out of her diary, while the twins bent their heads over George's workbooks, and systematically documented the ideas they had bounced around earlier in the beer-garden. With the input of the others—Ailith, Ginny, Tonks, when she appeared, as well as Hermione, Neville, Cedric, Ron and Sirius—they made lists of products they could manufacture to put into a practical, magical 'First Aid' kit. Maia had the idea of two different sets, one for the under-thirteen set, and one that catered to the needs of older teenagers and young-adults. They were also gender-specific, Maia in charge of the girls' ones, the twins consulting Neville, Ron and Cedric about the needs of the Hogwarts-bound teenaged boy.

Maia got out her artists' board, taping A3-size pieces of watercolour paper to it, and started working on ideas for her own products, the cosmetics, some of which would find their way into the younger First Aid kits.

For the younger set, things like dung-bombs and stink-pellets were to be included into the boys', while the girls' ones would feature a scented, flavoured lip-gloss, or one of her colour-change _Lip Glasses_, a mini bottle of her special-effects lacquer topcoats, which she named _Dazzle-Drops_. The idea of adding sheets of stationery, envelopes and a little square of fun stickers, a Skiving Snackbox apiece, alongside a pot of colour-change ink, a spell-checking quill and self-sharpening pencil and an ink-eraser made up the 'practical' side to the First Aid kits, and Maia had the idea of including a moving diagram of how to tie a school-tie, especially as they intended to market the First Aid kits to the younger Hogwarts set.

"Hey, we could even ask McGonagall to suggest them in the Hogwarts letters," Fred said, and George grinned, snapping his fingers, as Maia continued to paint.

"I like that. And Sirius could advertise the older version on Radio Rock," Maia said, smiling, eyes on her painting.

"Yeah, the listeners of Radio Rock are exactly the age-group we'd be trying to target," George said, grinning. "Young-professionals, older teenagers. People who'd want one of the First Aid kits tucked into their handbags or desks at work."

"We'd have to think about some of the contents, though," Fred said, frowning thoughtfully. "We should poll what the most common school-corridor ailments afflict our fellow students."

"Why don't we put together a short poll, and we can ask people on a night out to fill them out," Maia suggested. "I reckon if we went to the Sunflower or the Jobberknoll and told people we were working on a contraceptive-hangover-cure potion, they'd lap it up."

"Literally," George added.

"Would _you_ ever do it up against the wall in a corner of a crowded club like that couple the other night?" Fred grimaced.

"No way," Maia said, frowning subtly at her painting.

"You know, we could make a sweet that _stops_ you vomiting, if you've had too much to drink. Or just have a bad stomach," George said thoughtfully, eyes on his workbook, hand over his mouth, dip-pen between his fingers. "We've already got the Puking Pastilles down, we'd just have to produce one-half of them!"

"Could sell 'em in packs, wrapped up individual sweets, like those _Starbursts_ Opal likes," Fred said, smiling.

"Actually, we should probably add something in the First Aid kits to sort out bad stomachs," Maia said, grimacing subtly at the thought. "And we could develop something to get rid of cramps for the girls' kits. I _love_ magic!" The twins chuckled.

"So, what've we got already?" George asked, reviewing his notes, and Maia picked up her diary to look over her own annotations. The kit for the older Hogwarts set, as yet, included a stain-remover, a healing-potion and cotton-wool, a draught to increase concentration and stave off sleepiness, a higher-concentration hangover-cure that could get more doses out of a bottle, and they were developing one to incorporate a contraceptive potion for the girls' Kits, sunburn-healing balms—this idea came from Neville, who spent so much time in the greenhouses burning his neck—and a potion to clear spots instantly.

Unpleasant to think about the practicalities, they were considered necessary for a First Aid kit, therefore something to stop constipation and diarrhoea were added to the list of products, and Ginny suggested the lacquer Maia was developing, a clear topcoat that healed nails, buffing them. A nail-file was also added to the list, and a handkerchief was added to the girls' Kit—"being more prone to blubber than blokes are", Fred said, and Maia rolled her eyes, smiling.

"I really could've used one of these when I was at school," Sirius said, eyeing the contents of George's workbook and Maia's diary. "The number of times I got caught _in flagrante delicto_, and then became paranoid about impending fatherhood."

Maia laughed to herself, then smiled when Sirius glanced at her, his eyebrow raised. "That's what you call ironic—_my_ dad became the teenage father."

Sirius snorted, draped over the back of the sofa, carrying several records. "Yeah. _I'm_ the black sheep of the family. One can't help feel one's position is being usurped."

"You know what, I highly doubt your brother was thinking of showing you up for being the rebel when he was _making_ Maia," George remarked, and Maia grimaced. Sirius twitched, then shuddered deeply, making them laugh.

"That's disgusting," she grimaced.

"I still can't believe my _brother_ got Balian," Sirius said, seeming to savour the name. "_Balian_! What did she ever see in him?"

"Maybe he had attributes only Balian could see," George remarked lightly, with the tiniest hint of a smirk.

"Oh, _ew_!" Maia blurted. "_George_! That's my _father_."

"Well, whatever…" George shrugged. "What was it Uncle Bilius used to say? The fastest way to a woman's heart is through her—"

"Don't even finish that sentence if you wish to continue living, able to flirt with my niece," Sirius said sharply, eyebrows raised, and Maia smirked covertly.

"It's true though," she muttered softly, when Sirius' attention was diverted, and George shot her a grin.

A film was put on, _The Blue Lagoon_, and while the twins worked with the boys on the contents of the male-specific First Aid kits, Maia painted her own product concepts and details, then curled up with George, who fidgeted, until he had one leg stretched either side of her, and she draped her legs across Fred's, her head resting against George's stomach, the heat, the tranquillity of the film, the lethargy of a long day and the early-evening spent in intense sunshine creeping up on her.

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: I really want one of these First Aid kits—especially the potion that removes blood from clothing! And the nail-healer.


	25. Chapter 25

**A.N.**: _MuggleCreator_, this is Coral's dedication-chapter! I had a lot of fun writing it!

Okay, I just had a thought: Am I the only who thinks the look of David Tennant's _Doctor Who_ would be kind perfect for Remus? The trench-coat, the _Converses_, the pinstripe-suit?

Alright, everyone, I need a favour. More than reviews. I am designing a character in my head intended for _Fred_. She looks like Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) and is a half-blood, went to primary-school with Maia for a short time and moved to Scotland, and is educated in magic at home. I would like to ask for your opinions on names, and also suggestions for some personality quirks.

The choices for names are as follows, (and I will accept suggestions too): Zoë; Vivien; Felicity; Elsa; May; Violet; Iris; Ruth; Bethany; Rosie.

And I just came up with the most splendiferous of birthday-gifts for Maia. I cannot _WAIT_ to write about it!

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_25_

* * *

><p>"This is <em>amazing<em>!"

"You do _like_ it? I wasn't sure about the decoration," Maia said, pleased, but biting her lip; Harry's wide-eyed grin of delight seemed sincere as he removed the red tissue-paper and Snitch-patterned wrapping-paper from the pocket-wireless Maia had created for Harry; the enchanted glass-and-wood headphones Maia had invented with the twins' help rested carefully on his knee. He removed the pocket-wireless from its protective velvet-lined, open-ended leather case, examining it minutely, turning the Snitch to the sun to watch it flutter and flash, reading the little plaque on the top.

She had charmed the painted Snitch to move, but it only fluttered its wings; she had also painted two Snitches on the front of the case, one smaller than the other, in the lower-right hand corner, and one in the upper-left hand corner. A very small oval plaque of gold-coloured metal was located on the top-right, by the delicate On/Off switch and the volume dial. She had engraved it with, '_Harry,_ _Happy 15__th__ Birthday, Love Moony, Padfoot & Maia_'.

"No, it's…it's amazing!" Harry repeated, laughing softly, grinning. "Thank you!"

"You're welcome," Maia smiled. "I thought it might make your duration here a little more bearable. I've already pre-set the station to _Radio_ _Rock_." Harry flicked the gold On/Off switch carefully, and his emerald-green eyes glowed with undiluted ecstasy as Sirius' voice appeared out of seemingly nowhere, as clear as if he had been sat with them here at the park, laughing and chatting. Harry stilled, _listening_; Maia knew he was just listening to his godfather's voice, probably wondering if he'd ever heard Sirius so _happy_. "Here, I'll show you—the headphones are really easy, you just have to plug in this little thing… They're cordless, see?"

Adjusting the volume lower, she plugged the headphones in, and Harry placed them over his ears, adjusting the leather-trimmed band over his head; the convex circles of enchanted glass were encased in a ring of polished wood, trimmed with padded suede for comfort; the suede on Harry's pair was garnet-red, a small lion painted in gold on each of the polished headphones. Harry grinned as he donned the headphones, listening. After a moment, grinning and listening, as Maia smiled to herself and plucked blades of burned grass, Harry pulled the headphones off, taking out the plug.

"This is amazing," he said, beaming. "You _made_ these?"

"I had some help," Maia smiled. "Snuffles, Mr Weasley, the twins."

"I can't believe you made this," Harry beamed.

"Well, you're not getting anything for your birthday," Maia smiled. "That lot's worth seven Galleons!"

"Thanks," Harry grinned. "Are you going to sell them, then?"

"I thought of doing commissions," Maia smiled. "Ginny's asked for a leopard-print design; Opal wants one that glows in the dark like a Star-whale." She rolled her eyes, smiling. "The twins have commissioned one, too, with their emblem. They want it in _acid_ forget-me-not lacquer."

Harry laughed. "The twins aren't into subtle."

"No, they're not," Maia chuckled. "This morning, I was pleasantly roused into waking by the twins crashing together two sets of cymbals." Harry laughed loudly. "They also set Opal on me, jumping on the bed and getting me in the kidney." Harry collapsed onto the grass with laughter, chuckling to himself. "You may think it's funny… Have you ever been woken up by the twins, and a were-girl they've been feeding sweets?" Harry chuckled, propping himself up on his elbows, before turning up the volume on the pocket-wireless.

The sound of a zipper being undone and then zipped back up came over the wireless. "_And that was for Ophelie in Stratford-Upon-Avon_—_that's right, it's mail time!_" Sirius announced delightedly, and Maia rolled her eyes at Harry, who was laughing. "_We've had another influx of post from all of you, which is always encouraging—I especially appreciate the photos, ladies; they're papering the walls of the studio quite beautifully! We've had another ten submissions to the t-shirt design competition, just a few more days until the competition closes, and Niecey will get the winning design made up and available for purchase both directly from us and from _Mal'sRecordShack_ in Diagon Alley. _

"_And to the very attentive listeners who've requested recipes from Niecey, you'll be pleased to know she's printed another recipe-card for you to collect, they'll be winging their way to you by this afternoon._

"_There's a particular letter I wish to address. Coral, I've got several messages to deliver over the wireless; firstly, Professor Lupin hopes you achieved the N.E.W.T. results you worked so hard for to go into Healing at St Mungo's. _

"_Second, I hope Samuel isn't financially lacking at the moment, but if he wants to discuss the Ministry stupidity that cost me my freedom, he's more than welcome to send a letter to Niecey, who has several thoughts on the subject of my incarceration: _Veritaserum_ and _Pensieve_ are just two of the key phrases. Bear in mind, any mention of inklings to my identity to any authority-figures might lead to a halt on _RadioRock_, so best to keep ideas confined to dinner-banter._

"_When it comes to my political views on the Minister's legislative blunders, I've been considering other things that begin with the letter 'M'. Moron_," Sirius paused for emphasis."_Malice. Mutiny…murder… While my cohorts work tirelessly to repeal anti-werewolf laws and put a stop to all this nasty jurisdiction supporting purebloods that smacks of, dare I say it—of course I do—_Death Eater agendas_, one can only hope that our present Minister realises his mistake in pursuing such an itinerary before it's too late. _

"_Already we've had an overwhelming response to my chat yesterday about the Ministry's plans to cull centaurs and euthanize wizards upon receiving the werewolf bite; they've been so marvellously impassioned, I'm glad to see it's not just us in this little den of creative chaos whose teeth are set on edge by it! Here's a little bit of _Queen_ to get us going this morning_."

Sirius turned on a record; Queen's _We Are the Champions_; the first few lines of the lyrics spoke to Maia, and she knew they spoke to Sirius too, the reason he'd chosen this record to play for Coral. She and Harry listened, Harry smiling softly. When the song ended, Sirius said thoughtfully, "_Reminds me of my godson, that song. Ced too, but I've heard Haz was a bit of legendary to watch during his First Task_." Harry glanced at Maia, grinning.

"_Just to address one last point of your letter, Coral, the recipe you enclosed; Niecey luckily had some egg-whites leftover to make a Pavlova nest; we've also been teaching Opal the flags of the world this week, among other things, so she had fun creating an Australian flag out of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and redcurrants!_

"_Unfortunately, the slice designated for Niecey's breakfast this morning ended up as an Eton Mess facial for George when the twins decided to wake her with _Sibelius' _'Karelia Suite – Intermezzo', two sets of cymbals and a five-year-old were-girl hyped up on chocolate-mousse and Fizzing Whizbees. Not that it was my idea to give her them for breakfast…_"

"This is fantastic," Harry said, turning to grin at Maia. He bit his lip. "He sounds happy."

"He is," Maia smiled. "He'll be even happier when you're there."

"I'm counting the days," Harry said drily, shooting her a grin, but it slipped from his face. "You don't know when it'll be, them taking me away?"

"Not sure yet," Maia said honestly. "I don't want to say 'a few days, tops' and have your hopes dashed, but _around_ your birthday, I'd say."

"'Kay," Harry mumbled to himself, his shoulders slumping.

"It's not that long," Maia smiled encouragingly.

Over the pocket-wireless, still turned on, Sirius blurted indignantly "—_Kingsfoil, why am I lining up my own bloody records_?—"

"_Sorry_," said Neville's voice apologetically.

"_There will be a brief interlude while Kingsfoil tracks down the _Powderfinger_ record I was going to play next—it's on top of the _PlayWizard_—who brought _that_ in here? Boys?_"

"_Not ours_," said Fred's voice, chuckling.

"_Oh_ _well, finders keepers_," Sirius said idly.

"_My Liege, your record_," George reminded him.

"_Oh yeah!_" Music suddenly started playing again.

"My _liege_?" Harry said, glancing at Maia.

"The twins found out that Snuffles was one of the writers of the Marauder's Map," Maia said in an undertone, and Harry grinned. "I've got a photo of George laying Snuffles one right on the lips if you want to see it."

"Absolutely," Harry chuckled.

"Speaking of the twins," Maia said, checking her watch, "I should probably be getting back. We're working on several projects together; I have to be there to _supervise_."

"You're trying to corral the twins," Harry grinned. "Good luck."

"Thanks," Maia smiled. She climbed off the ground, groaning and dusting the seat of her sundress, bending her knees and stretching out her legs. "Are you going to stay out here? Or shall I walk you to the door like a proper gentleman?"

"I'll stay out," Harry smiled. "I've got magazines and this new pocket-wireless!"

"You'd better take notes," Maia smirked. "Snuffles will quiz you to test you've actually been listening to his broadcasts."

"I won't be turning this off until I'm with you all," Harry promised her, his glasses flashing as he grinned up at her. Maia smiled.

"Alright, well… I'd better go," she said. "Enjoy the care-package."

"I will!" Harry grinned, tucking the headphones over his ears, and Maia Disapparated.

* * *

><p>"How's our boy?" Sirius asked, grinning, as he tugged one side of his headphones off; ankles crossed on the desk, he was still reading the <em>PlayWizard<em> magazine he had found.

"Thrilled over his new pocket-wireless," Maia smiled.

"He liked it?" Sirius grinned.

"He thought it was fantastic," Maia smiled. She thought Harry had appreciated it far more because he could listen to his godfather sounding so happy and contented, teasing the twins, winding Opal up to hysteria, putting on his favourite music, and mentioning _him_, dropping hints to the rest of the world just who he was, safe inside the Fidelius Charm. "I left him in the park with his post, some magazines, the care-package and the wireless."

"That'll keep him happy for a few days," Sirius sighed, examining a stack of records in his lap.

"He said he's not going to turn the wireless off until he's here," Maia said, glancing at Sirius, who looked up. "He's been asking when you're coming to get him again."

"Soon," Sirius said, turning back to the records. "A few more weeks." He sighed. "You know, Neville's birthday is the day before Harry's—maybe we should throw a joint party?"

"Neville might like that," Maia smiled warmly. She doubted Neville had ever had a birthday-party that didn't consist of his elderly relatives sharing out fruit-cake.

"And your birthday isn't too long after that," Sirius observed.

"Nearly three weeks," Maia nodded. She had everyone's birthdays—even members of the Order she didn't particularly know very well—written in her journal; she was very fond of sending birthday-cards.

"Well, we should celebrate," Sirius said. "I'm sure the twins can think up a few party decorations."

"I can do a dessert spread," Maia smiled. "All Neville's and Harry's favourite things. George has…had an idea about my cooking."

"You two are incorrigible," Sirius chuckled. Maia shrugged.

"Yeah, well, I might be able to contribute some charity funds to W.I.N. or S.P.E.W. if we get it right," she said, and Sirius quirked an eyebrow.

"You're not pimping George out, are you?" he asked, and Maia laughed.

"No—no, I don't think George would go for that. Fred might, though," she added, musing. "Oh—I've got a letter for you from Harry." She tugged the envelopes out of her little bag, sorting out the one for Sirius from those for Ron and Hermione.

"Excel—" A huge _bang_ and a wail echoed downstairs, followed by shrieks of laughter and Hermione's voice, murmuring concernedly. Maia glanced at Sirius.

"They're using old mattresses to line the stairs as a toboggan run," Sirius said, flicking the microphone on again. Maia chuckled and left the room, listening to him say, "_And_ _that was _GreenDay_; on a side-note, I just received a letter from my godson and I am _beside myself about it_! I was gonna chat with you about modern-punk and whether it truly _exists_, but given I really want to read this letter, I'll be following up with a track from _Sum 41_ that Niecey particularly seems to like_."

Upstairs, she indeed found the fourth-storey staircase lined with old mattresses reconnoitred from the attic—Maia suspected Kreacher had put the twins onto them—and, using an old bed-sheet, everyone was taking turns throwing themselves down the stairs, to general hilarity and more than a few bruises. She hopped out of the way before Opal, gunning down the stairs in a pillowcase and giggling shrilly, could take out her knees.

"Good to see you haven't missed me while I've been gone," she smirked. "You two ready to work?"

"We were just waiting for you," George grinned from his broom, hovering above the landing and, lifting Opal under the arms, hovered up to the top of the stairs to hand her over to Fred. Leaving Opal in the capable hands of Ginny, Cedric and Hermione—Neville had gone to visit his Great Auntie Violet with his grandmother—Maia and the twins made their way up to the attic.

"By the way, we're loving the Aphrodite commission," Fred said, as they got ready to get stuck in, the boys wrapping floral cover-all aprons on, and Maia smiled as she perched on a stool at the end of the work-table with her journal and a stack of potion books.

"Did you get them back from the printer?" Maia asked excitedly, smiling; indicating a parcel wrapped in brown paper, some of which had been torn aside, George handed Maia a large print the twins intended to use in their display for this particular love-potion. Another piece of artwork for one of the twins' dozen different love-potions, they had already come up with dove-topped stoppers for the dainty pearl-coloured bottles when they proposed Maia paint something for them, and she had built on the dove theme to bring in the goddess of love, Aphrodite, who was usually associated with doves, myrtle, roses and mirrors: against a backdrop of a gentle lilac, pink and baby-blue sunrise striated with champagne-gold and fuchsia, standing in the glittering, pearly surf of an otherwise flawless mirrored sea by the _P__etra_ _tou Romiou_, Aphrodite's legendary birthplace in Paphos, Cyprus, stunning Aphrodite (modelled after Diane Kruger, Fred's future wife after going through Maia's inspiration boards for hairstyles, beauty and fashion) with billows of curling blonde hair interspersed with ropes of pearls and crowned with a laurel of flowering myrtle, lifted her sun-kissed hands to her lips, smilingly blowing a gentle kiss, and as she did so, doves and roses exploded from her fingertips in a shimmer of pinkish-champagne glitter that exploded into the air, charmed to be fragrant like myrtle-rose perfume. The doves flapped around her, making her smile, as a rendition of the pearl-coloured bottle appeared in her hands, cradling it lovingly and seemingly offering it to the viewer.

"_Gorgeous_, isn't she," Fred sighed lustily, eyeing the print, and Maia chuckled as she propped it print on the sideboard; the package wrapped in brown paper was the supply of printed box-patterns, the moving Aphrodite in sunrise on the front of the box, with myrtle climbing up the back where the delicate swirling pink oval containing warnings and usage-suggestions was located, doves fluttering up from roses on the sides, and a symbol of two doves in flight in a sky-blue circle surrounded by white myrtle-blossoms on the top.

"So we can bottle them up today," George grinned happily.

"We were thinking last night," Fred said, and George nodded encouragingly.

"What?"

"Two words," George growled softly, grinning lustily.

"Brooke—"

"—Shields."

"Oh, dear," Maia chuckled.

"It was quite a boring film, if you weren't paying attention to the details," George said thoughtfully, "but the scenery was _stunning_, and we thought… Well, we wouldn't mind being stranded on a tropical island with Brooke Shields!"

"I tell you what, I would've had more than _one_ kid with her by the time the film ended," Fred smirked. Maia chuckled.

"What was your idea?"

"Daydream charms," George grinned. "We got the idea when Ginny was being all swoony over _Pirates of the Caribbean_."

"We didn't think much of Keira Knightley at all," Fred wrinkled his nose.

"But Anna-Maria?" George grinned, and Fred growled, clawing the air with a grin. "And we thought…girls like pirates. Girls like daydreaming about swoon-inducing pirates," George said. "Why not _produce_ a highly-realistic daydream that'd let someone—Well, we're not selling them to her!—someone like _Ginny_ make-believe she was actually _in_ a film with the likes of Captain Sparrow, Strider, Cesare Borgia and Chris Hemsworth."

"Highly realistic—"

"Very erotic—"

"And virtually undetectable," Fred smirked, as Maia laughed at George's suggestively-waggling eyebrows.

"And after watching _The Blue Lagoon_ last night, we thought we could come with a few different daydreams," George said.

"We thought, pirates—"

"Desert islands—"

"And then we remembered your fairytales," Fred nodded. "The ball in _Twelve Dancing Princesses_; Rapunzel trapped in her tower and visited by the handsome prince… I mean, there's a lot of room to manoeuvre there, if we wanted to go by way of sultry daydreams."

"Absolutely," Maia grinned. Curious, she added, "Can you do that, bottle daydreams?"

"Oh, yeah," George nodded. "You can bottle anything, as long as you know how."

"And you two know how to bottle daydreams?"

"Well, we found a load of books that feature incantations and stuff for things like fabricating highly-realistic memories that you can implant in someone," Fred said. "The premise for those spells was intended for, er, _darker_ purposes, but the spells can be adapted. If we were to do daydreams, we'd make 'em short, and temporary, you know, so you can fit them into a History of Magic lesson and no-one would be any the wiser."

"Smart," Maia smiled, again thrown by how _bright_ the twins were. They were creative and had a lot of ingenuity, where Hermione was just book-smart. The twins were taking some of what they'd learned at school, most of what they'd learned studying by themselves, and pushed the boundaries of what people thought could be done.

"So we'll be commissioning some more artwork, if that's alright," George said. "I know you've got a tonne on your plate at the moment."

"I'm alright," Maia said, sighing softly, as she opened her journal to her notes from last night.

"You fell asleep before the end of the film, Mai," George said, tugging a drawer out for his sturdy wooden chopping-board and silver knife. "You've never done that since we've been here."

"We might've taken it personally," Fred said, glancing at her as he looked around for his ladle.

"It was a long few days," Maia said quietly.

"Yeah, and you didn't sleep at all the night before last," Fred said, pointing a finger disapprovingly. "Don't think we didn't notice." Maia shrugged slightly, sighing softly. She hadn't slept the night after their second lesson at Madam Primpernelle's, and that had been a _long_ day, followed by a very day in the Hogwarts greenhouses and an evening class at _Madam Primpernelle's_, the one specifically for hair treatments.

"I'm alright," she said again, a little touched that the twins had noticed she was still getting bouts of insomnia. She didn't like them, but she didn't forfeit the chance to be productive when they occurred. "Things are catching up with me, I suppose."

"Diane," George said very quietly, succinct as ever when it came to reading Maia's thoughts. She nodded slightly.

"Diane… Other things," she sighed, chin resting on her hand as she gazed through the window into the blazing azure sky.

"Have you told Sirius you're not sleeping well?" George asked, as Fred bustled around at his desk looking for things. If George was the more artistically-inclined one, he was strangely the more organised of the twins; Fred could never find anything he wanted, and spent a good amount of time Summoning things he'd misplaced. Maia shrugged.

"He's got enough on his plate," she said softly. George gave her a look.

"Well, you know _that's_ not true," he said. "It's not like he's rallying Britain's house-elves for registration, or clothing the nation's werewolves!"

"He does his part for both," Maia reminded George; it could hardly be blamed on Sirius that he couldn't go out and rally the theoretical troops in person. She had started _Radio Rock_ for Sirius so he could do his part, without being a danger to himself. Frequent arguments with Mrs Weasley overheard by the rest of the house hinted that Sirius was starting to realise that rash action on his part would hurt a lot of people; not least, Maia and Harry.

"Well, it's thanks to him we've got another _ninety-seven_ orders," Fred said, grinning, as he pointed at the two makeshift letter-organisers Maia had found for the twins: one, a repossessed French-style shutter, repainted a distressed apple-green and attached to the wall by the windows above Fred's desk; the other, an old birdcage with three painted plywood shelves, the top separated to hold incoming letters. Both the French shutter and the birdcage were filled with people's customised stationery, in which they sent payment, either cash or money-order, with completed order-forms.

"I had no idea so many people actually listened to _Radio_ _Rock_," George said thoughtfully. "I mean, I know Lee and a few of our friends at Hogwarts like the music, and, yeah, Sirius, Jack and Vittorio have been getting loads of post, and even you've been getting requests for the recipes Sirius mentions, but we've had _loads_ of orders for things Sirius has demonstrated over the wireless, and requests for our owl-order catalogues."

"Sold out of our maggot bath-bombs in _two days_ after Sirius broadcasted them," Fred said, shooting her a smirk, and Maia stifled a shudder. "We've had to make another two batches to fulfil back-orders."

"Remus has been getting letters, too," Maia said, smiling thoughtfully. "People he used to go to school with, old students, they're all clamouring to give him character-witness statements on how amazing he is."

"Remus was a great teacher," George said.

"He taught us a lot—and he was always encouraging."

"We only bothered with our Defence O.W.L. because we wanted to impress him," George said thoughtfully. "He had a way of making you want to be the best you could be."

"I reckon, if they've got someone like Remus in charge, it'll go a long way for the werewolf-rights movement," Fred said, grimacing curiously at a stain on his potions book. "He's a poster-boy for everything society says a werewolf _can't _be."

"So are we going to get cracking then?" George asked, clapping his hands together and rubbing them. "We thought we'd start on the First Aid kits for the older set."

"The ones for first-years and the like can be put together now," Fred said. "We just need to sort out packaging, and the lip-glosses."

"I've been thinking about them," Maia said, and the twins glanced at her inquisitively. "The boys get a dung-bomb _and_ a stink-pellet or a firecracker; the girls only get the lip-gloss. If I can develop those hair-dye sticks I talked to you about, George, that'd be something…_fun_ for the girls' Kits."

"Are you having any luck with them?" George asked.

"I'm still working on them," Maia admitted. She had visions of girls painting their hair with streaks of champagne, silver and gold—metallic _and_ high-sparkle glitter, as well as the bold, rich dye colours, fuchsia and iridescent peacock, double-decker red, sunflower-yellow, lime-green, etc., perhaps even scented, or colour-change.

"Have you figured out what you're going to name your company yet?" George asked, glancing at Maia as he lugged over his workbook, darting to one of the apothecary chests to tug drawers open.

"Well, when Lance helped me put together the application for my pocket-wireless patent, he helped me set up my own company. _Pleiades Inc._," Maia said.

"Clever. Plays on your name," George said thoughtfully.

"That's what I thought," Maia smiled.

"Well, you've got the name," Fred grinned. "That's always the first thing!"

"And the hardest," George nodded. "So we can put '…_in Association With_ _Pleiades Inc_.' or something like that on the packaging—partnership! That's the word I want. '…_in Partnership with Pleiades Inc._' How does that sound?"

"That sounds wonderful, actually," Maia beamed.

"And we'll split the profits fifty-fifty," Fred said, glancing up. "Really it should be sixty-forty or seventy-thirty, since you came up with the ideas."

"Fifty-fifty is perfect," Maia smiled. "So—shall I be in charge of the cosmetics? You and George can do the stink-pellets and things? And we can work together to build up a stock of hangover-cures, healing potions, sunburn balms, all the rest of that?"

"Yeah, I think so," the twins said together, with an identical nod. George added, "We've sent a letter to that leather shop in Diagon Alley, to see whether they'll supply faux-leather shaving-bags to us wholesale."

"How many are you putting together to start off with?"

"We thought we could make up fifty, for each age-group," Fred said. "Your medium-sized clutch-purses and our shaving-bags for the older Hogwarts set and young-adults. The leather envelopes for the younger Hogwarts set—"

"We stopped by Diagon Alley while you went to see Harry," George said, reaching over to his desk, where a flimsy brown paper-bag sat on his chair, and he tugged out a smallish envelope made out of leather, with a small silvery stud to fasten the flaps together. "We thought we'd get one to start off with, the prototype, to test how big bottles and things can be for everything to fit in. And we can advertise them all with Sirius once we've done all the calculations for costing."

"It's clever, actually—we can keep them this thin and convenient, and use Extending charms on the inside to keep everything in," Maia said, examining the envelope.

"Yeah, and we could even talk to McGonagall about suggesting them in the Hogwarts letters," George said, eyes glowing, and Fred snapped his fingers, flashing a grin.

"Yeah. '_Not Required, But Useful…_'" Fred said. "Or something like that."

"'_Everything You Need to Solve Hallway Emergencies, in One Reusable Case_'," George said. "We could make up a full stock of them to sell on the Hogwarts Express on the first of September."

"And we could put up a poster for them on the common-room notice-boards. There's always a load of stuff advertised on those boards."

"True."

"We'd best do them quick," Fred said. "McGonagall usually sends the letters out late-July."

"Right," George sighed, brow furrowing. "We can finish them in time. We could put a small order-form for them with each of our mini-catalogues as soon as we get the prototypes photographed." The twins sent specialised owl-order catalogues to people, depending on what they had initially bought, things that went along with what they had already bought; it was no more than four A4-sized pieces of parchment printed with full moving illustrations and colour photographs, folded together and neatly stapled, but the back panel featured three tear-out order-forms that could be sent back, and Maia could see a small A6-sized order-form, like the ones she had tested out with _The Talon_ the last few readings, stapled into the inside of the form.

"Those _Madam_ _Primpernelle_'s classes are _definitely_ worth the money. And the effort," Maia said.

"Absolutely," Fred said, casting the far-right sideboard a furtive glance; the twins were still experimenting with some of their joke-cosmetics ideas, and the long sideboard cabinets (there were three, end to end) each being set up with three individual stations for different potions simmering away, featured one of their latest inventions still in progress, the joke lipstick they were still trying to achieve the perfect red for.

"I'll get to my makeup in a bit," Maia said, jotting the ideas down in her journal. "I'm helping with the other potions for our First Aid kits."

"Indeed you are," George beamed, handing her a third black apron. They paused, frowning, and glanced around. Two potions were already simmering on the work-table, the sideboards were all occupied; the _Deliveries_ desk was cluttered with orders that needed wrapping and sending off.

"How is it we've run out of space already?" Fred frowned bemusedly.

"You need proper premises," Maia said, glancing at the twins, who grunted in agreement. "There's always the coffee-table and the sideboard in the _Talon_ Office."

"Suppose as long as we're out of there by tomorrow-night, it can't hurt," George said, and they exchanged a nod, striding to the narrow double-doors that opened out into the little parlour. Both sides of the doors had been painted TARDIS blue—Maia had turned the doors and the doorframe into a TARDIS, even with a little white light at the top on either side.

Turning on Maia's pocket-wirelesses so they could listen to Sirius' broadcast, the double-doors open between the two rooms, Maia worked out of the _Talon_ Office while the twins ducked and dodged around each other in their workshop.

"Hey, how're your lessons with Snape going?" George called curiously, after a little while.

"Very good, actually," Maia said. "I just got another of my essays back. One mark shy of an Outstanding for '_excessive research beyond the bounds of assignment requirements_'." She snorted, rolling her eyes; it seemed like Snape was determined not to actually acknowledge how good she was at the subject of Potions. "But I've stopped getting that crippling, blinding pain in my eye whenever I have my lessons with him."

"That's always good," Fred chuckled.

"Actually, he says I'm a gifted Potioneer," Maia said thoughtfully. "Sirius doesn't understand why he's…well, _not_ a bastard to me, when he seems to make everybody else's life hell."

"Maybe he knew your dad," Fred suggested, a little darkly. It was common knowledge that Maia's father had been a Death Eater who had disappeared during the War. Nobody seemed to know what had happened to him, but Sirius said it wasn't uncommon for people to just disappear during the War; the Order's own Caradoc Dearborn, a very talented wizard, had gone missing. They'd never found him.

"What do you mean?" Maia asked, glancing away from her cauldron, which was simmering nicely.

"Well—" The twins exchanged a look. "We overheard on the Extendable Ears the other night… Snape was a Death Eater. You know he came by to give a report? He's been making subtle investigations into his old mates' activities."

"That attack at the Quidditch World Cup?" George said, glancing over at her. "That was the Death Eaters who walked free, who did that."

"So you think Snape might've known my father?" Maia asked, frowning thoughtfully.

"And if your dad was in Slytherin—Sirius said his brother was only two or three years younger than him," Fred said. "They might've been friends at school."

"Snape did say my father was quite a talented Potioneer," Maia said softly. He had also mentioned something called the 'Slug Club', of which her father had apparently been a member; the leader, the previous Potions Master, had hand-picked his favourites, students he thought would go places, giving them a leg-up. His especial favourites had been, of course, from his own House, Slytherin, especially those who excelled at Potions.

She sighed, and went back to her hangover-cure potion, the potency adjusted so more drams could be used from each bottle without it running out so quickly. They had decided to call it 'Walk-of-Shame'; all of the First Aid kit products (the older set of them, anyway) had been given fun names.

Having spent the last week and a bit reviewing and reworking _Madam_ _Primpernelle's_ cosmetics recipes, the thought of putting the new, youthful shades, names and effects she had experimented with into production was a lot of fun, and strangely satisfying: while _Walk-of-Shame_ cooled in its cauldron, Maia wrapped the owl-orders that needed delivering, and she sat at George's desk with her journal and several spare bits of parchment, building a sort of tray they could organise each of the products in for each Kit, so they weren't all just shoved into the bags upon sale; and also so they knew what would fit, what size bottles they needed, even deciding on whether or not the product packaging should match colours, etc.

Reminded of the ancient Greek Asclepius, the god of healing and medicine, she sketched out a few rough colour-schemes with her paints, and showed the twins a few concepts for branding the First Aid kits; a small serpent, wound around a wand, mimicking the Rod of Asclepius, long-time symbol for medicine, superimposed over a small crest inspired by the shape of the Black family-crest.

"The wand could be whatever colour," Maia said, "but to make the design _young_, the little serpent could be brightly-coloured. And, for the packaging…" She picked up the leather envelope and wound around it a three-inch-wide band she had cut from the scrap-parchment, holding it in place. "Simple. Cost-effective—we could print the contents on the band, so people know what's inside it, and can still see the colour of the envelope or the bag; they can cut the bands to size at the printer's. We'd just have to use a simple Sticking Charm to secure it."

"You know, I don't know why we didn't come up with these," Fred said, taking the envelope and parchment from her, George leaning in to examine the different colour-schemes Maia had painted for the logo.

"It's something someone with _common-sense_ would think of," George explained to his twin, who made a thoughtful noise, and Maia chuckled as George winked at her. His eyes suddenly illuminated with delight. "We could do _babysitting_ kits!"

"What?"

"For—well, we could put in stuff that babysitters would find useful to keep kids entertained," George said. "Those bubbles, the mini fireworks, other stuff like that, a healing-potion, because, let's face it, if our childhood was anything to go by, you need an encyclopaedia of healing charms if your kid's under ten."

"Good shout," Fred grinned. "When Chumley gets back to us about the stuff we gave her to test out, we can put something together."

"With the party-crackers," George reminded him, and Fred nodded. "And the gift-sets."

"I like this," Fred said, offering Maia back the leather envelope and parchment loop. "We just have to figure out how we're packaging things."

"Some of those bottles you've got, full of makeup, they'd be good," George said, glancing at Maia.

"I'll bring them up, we can have a look and start designing our own based on what we like, what works," Maia said. "And where's the wholesale catalogue from the glassworks?"

"I've got it in the cupboard," George said, striding over to one of the cupboards and opening it, revealing a careful arrangement of order-catalogues, books and stacks of the paper-wrapped deliveries from the printer's, full of the twins' unassembled packaging. Apparating downstairs, Maia collected her bags of makeup and popped back upstairs. The twins, having set their two cauldrons over on the tiles surrounding the heating-stove in the corner to cool, had used the Scourgify charm to clean the work-table, and they each drew up a stool and sat, going through the glassworks catalogue, Maia's journal and George's workbook spread out, with all of Maia's cosmetics set out neatly in front of them.

Her _Benefits Cosmetics_ sample pack of 'Posie-Tint', 'High Brow' and 'Benetint' was a big inspiration, and had given her ideas on packaging for the normal cosmetics line, the size of the little bottles, with the built-in brush in the twist-cap, were used as a measure for quantities per bottle for her mini nail-lacquer, lipstick and gloss, and the cheek-stain; the healing clear nail-lacquer was to be put into a full _Essie_-sized bottle; and going over the collection of potions bottles acquired from around Grimmauld Place (the cobalt Hangover Cure potion from the kitchen especially) they put together designs for the collection of bottles and pots for the potions and balms, each specific potion a different shape bottle, with a small, squat pot either hexagonal or round for the balms. Bright cobalt-blue glass and black was the colour-scheme for the contents of the boys' First Aid kits, with details on the packaging loop and labels in metallic turquoise; keeping things neutral, knowing not every girl loved pink, bright colours _or_ pastels, Maia chose clear glass and matte black for the contents of the girls' kits, subtle and sophisticated, the colour coming from the shimmery glosses, lacquers and stains, with warm fawn-gold, subtly-shimmery champagne-gold and hints of crimson for the labels.

* * *

><p>Mrs Weasley had gone out early in the morning, to help Bill get settled in his new house (he had been staying at the Burrow, while the rest of his family stayed here in Grimmauld Place, keeping an eye on the house while looking for a place of his own) and when she returned for lunch, they went downstairs, careful to push the mirror to, and met everyone in the kitchen for a lunch of leftovers. Maia sat with the twins on the porch step, soaking up the sunshine and sharing a glass of Butterbeer, enjoying the fresh air after the potion-fumes from the attic.<p>

"If we go now, we can get our order in with the glassworks this afternoon," Fred said quietly, leaning against the railing, frowning thoughtfully at the other side of the step; the front-door was open, letting the hall get some air, and Neville was humming contentedly to himself as he potted several cuttings from his Great Auntie Violet's greenhouse (he had returned shortly after Mrs Weasley, thankful his visit with his aunt had been cut short).

"If they've got a back-stock of some of those bottles and things, we could get things bottled up already," George said, offering Maia the shining apple he had just started off for her with a huge _crunch_. "We could go to the tanner, as well, and look into those envelopes in Hogwarts House colours."

"You know, I could make a pattern for them out of faux leather," Maia said, and the twins glanced at her. "They've got a huge selection of colours at Gladrag's; and it'd be less-expensive, even buying the leather stamp. You could even do them in the Quidditch League colours. They'd go down a treat, especially with the younger crowd."

"You could even do special lip-glosses and lacquers in the team colours," George said, smiling over at her; Maia smiled, crunching on the apple, her cheek pouching as Crookshanks sauntered outside and curled up in her lap, her legs crossed.

"Might do well to sell those individually, as well," Maia said thoughtfully. "Ginny says I should get more into Quidditch, after all!" The boys chuckled. "I could even do Quidditch team nail-lacquer wraps with the team emblems…"

"Are you working on something again?" Neville asked curiously, after glancing inside to check on Mrs Weasley's whereabouts.

"We always are!" Fred said, grinning, reaching over to clamp a hand on Neville's shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "We'll have that sunburn sorted out for you, Neville. You'll be redneck-no-more!" Maia laughed; George grinned, and Fred beamed at the inadvertent product-naming.

"Brilliant!" George chuckled, taking a chunk out of the apple he and Maia were sharing.

"That'd fit in a little label on those pots," Fred said thoughtfully.

"We'll have to have a go with your typewriter," George said, glancing at Maia.

"Maybe tomorrow," Maia said, squinting in the sun.

"Yeah, let's just bottle things up and get the pots ready, we can sort out fonts and things from there," George agreed.

"Does an inventor's work never cease?" Fred sighed, yawning.

"Apparently not," Maia said quietly, watching as a late owl fluttered to the very top window, the one the twins had left open to air out the attic-workshop. _Ninety-_eight_ orders_, she thought.

The others decided to accompany them to Diagon Alley, if for no other reason than to get an ice-cream from Florean Fortescue's. Ron and Hermione went off together; trailed by Neville, Cedric took Opal into _Quality Quidditch Supplies_ to look at things so she could pick out a birthday-present for her dad, where they left the group and went off to first the glassworks; the apothecary; and Gladrag's, to investigate into the selection of faux-leathers; in the leatherworks, they picked up a press that could stamp an entire design straight onto the leather. Maia popped into Madam Primpernelle's to pick up one of the charts for colours that complemented each skin-tone, and they all met up outside Florean Fortescue's.

"When we go camping again," Opal said, as George lifted her onto his hip so she could peer through the glass into the bins of ice-cream, gelato and sorbet, "we have to get ice-creams from here for the other were-babies."

"Absolutely," Fred agreed.

"God I love ice-cream," Opal sighed lustily, and Maia chuckled, smirking.

"Wotcher!" someone called, and a grin spread across every face as they glanced over and saw Tonks! She was wearing one of her casual non-office-approved outfits, her hair was blonde, the ends seemingly dipped with ruby-fuchsia red. Maia loved the colour instantly. Glancing past Tonks, she saw that the young Auror had been sitting with an older couple; the woman was _very_ beautiful, with rich dark-brunette hair, and rather aristocratic features Maia thought she recognised from _Sirius_.

"Tonks!" a chorus echoed jubilantly, and Tonks stumbled as she bounded over; apologising to the warlock she had bumped into, Tonks hopped over.

"What're you all doing here?" Tonks grinned. "Thought you'd be at home."

"Mum's back from helping Bill settle in," Fred said in explanation, and Tonks grinned.

"Have you been getting up to trouble?" she asked, beaming.

"Us? _Naughty_?" Fred and George exclaimed, raising their eyebrows.

"They have!" Opal cried, her face pressed to the glass, fidgeting in George's arms so she could see the other ice-cream bins. "They're _inventing_ again. Maia's going to be _rich_ when she marries Fred and George!" Maia laughed.

"Mm, if I don't go to jail for polygamy," she said.

"Get your ice-creams, then come and meet my mum and dad!" Tonks grinned. "They've no idea how curious they are about you all!" George took the longest to choose an ice-cream flavour. By the time he joined them, at the two tables Ted Tonks had pushed together so they could all sit together, there were no spare chairs; standing up, Maia offered him her chair, and he pulled her into his lap. She linked her arm comfortably around his neck, as he rested one large hand on her hip, keeping her from slipping off his lap.

Pulling out her camera, Maia passed it round the table, so that they could document the nice little lull at Florean Fortescue's, meeting Tonks' parents, who weren't what Maia had been expecting. Andromeda was _proper_, but she was a nice woman, surprisingly _warm_ from things Maia had heard of Sirius' cousins' family, and the photograph of Opal's horrified, open-mouthed expression of shock upon discovering Andromeda, who'd let her have some of her ice-cream to try and was quite taken with little Opal, had been in _Slytherin_, was worth any amount of Galleons.

"—I understand you've recently become playmates with my daughter," Andromeda smiled, glancing down at Opal, sat between her and laidback, humorous Ted, who had conjured several cushions for her to sit on so she could reach the table.

"Tonks indulges me, really," Opal sighed, licking her spoon of chocolate-mousse gelato. Andromeda chuckled. Opal glanced at Andromeda thoughtfully. "Was it nice having sisters?" she asked suddenly. Andromeda blinked, eyebrows rising.

"Not remotely," she said, as Ted smirked into his ice-cream, chuckling softly.

"Hm," Opal frowned thoughtfully. Glancing back at Andromeda, she said, "Bill says it's lovely having a sister. But I heard Uncle Padfoot say your sisters were bitch—"

"Opal!" Maia said warningly.

"Well, he _did_!" Opal said earnestly, turning wide eyes onto her.

"Yes, but you're not supposed to use that word," Maia said, giving her a reproving look as George chuckled.

"Uncle Padfoot does," Opal said, blinking her wide eyes.

"Yes, but Uncle Padfoot is far gone in age and decrepitude," Maia said, reaching to swat Opal with a rolled-up paper napkin, making her giggle. "_Do_—_not_—_use_—_that_—_word_."

"Alright," Opal sighed heavily. Glancing back at Andromeda, who was smiling softly with amusement, she prompted, "But your sisters were naughty, weren't they? Uncle Padfoot said so."

"They weren't very kind, no," Andromeda said.

"Ginny's nice," Opal said, turning to stare at the freckled, brown-eyed girl. "And _she's_ a sister…" After a moment, Opal gazed at Maia. "I've decided to adopt you, Maia."

"Oh yeah?" Maia laughed.

"You're going to be my sister," Opal said, climbing to her feet on her chair. "You won't be orphaned anymore, and you can curse the _bajeezus_ out of Mummy if she ever comes back." She said this last statement with such an eccentric expression, her little fists clenched, that nearly everyone laughed.

"I'm not going to curse your mother, Opal," Maia chuckled, though privately, she knew she would be tempted to if she ever met Jules' ex-wife.

"Not even the Entrail-Expelling Curse that Phineas Nigellus taught me?" Opal asked beseechingly.

"Do you know what that curse does, Opal?" Andromeda asked, eyebrows raised.

"No."

"It makes all your innards explode out of your tummy—like this…" Ted said, mimicking something exploding from his stomach. "Urgh…_argh_!" He flopped in his seat, making Opal giggle.

"Well, she'd deserve it, the spoiled brat!" Opal laughed.

"Opal!" Maia admonished.

"Oh, _alright_," Opal sighed, smiling. "You can just use that Bat-Bogey Hex on her, Maia. That one's funny." Giggling, she sank back into her seat, reaching out a finger to wipe the residual ice-cream from her little bowl.

"Mm, that is very good," Ted said, smacking his lips after finishing a scoop of Butterbeer-praline ice-cream. "I think I shall have to have another scoop! Anyone else for another?"

"Me, please!" Tonks chirped, grinning fondly at her dad.

"Yeah, I'll come up with you," Fred said, grinning. "Been meaning to ask Florean about his strawberry ice-cream recipe…"

"Oh dear," Andromeda said, smiling as she watched Fred bound after Ted. Glancing at George, she smiled as she asked, "Is what Nymphadora's been telling me about you two true?"

"Probably," George grinned, licking his ice-cream.

"If I give you a significant monetary endowment now, would you forbid Ted entry into your establishment when you find premises?" Andromeda asked, chuckling as Fred, leaning against the counter and chatting animatedly with Ted, bolted away from Florean Fortescue with a loud "_EEK_!" when Florean raised his wand.

"Apparently, Florean's recipes are a time-honoured, curse-guarded secret," Fred shivered, sinking back into his seat. "I won't _repeat_ what he threatened to do to me! Goodness me, even my _freckles_ are blushing!" Something chimed prettily, and Andromeda glanced at her watch, a narrow band of black satin tying a diamond-encircled mother-of-pearl watch-face to her wrist.

"Oh, we'd better go," Andromeda said, glancing at her husband, who gazed beseechingly at her, tongue poised to lick his second scoop of ice-cream.

"But—"

"Ted!" Andromeda chuckled.

"Oh, alright," Ted grumbled. "We'll have to finish our discussion at another date, Fred."

"I look forward to it," Fred grinned, shaking Ted's hand; Ted shook hands all around, and Andromeda kissed the top of Opal's head before leaning to give Maia a brief, gentle hug. Bidding everyone goodbye, Tonks grinned before following her parents out of the ice-cream parlour.

"Nice couple," George remarked, watching them disappear along the cobblestone street.

"You can tell where Tonks gets her sense of humour from," Fred said, grinning. "Apparently, every April Fool's Day, Ted used to pull a prank on Andromeda."

"Really?" Hermione asked curiously, surprised.

"Yeah!"

"That's brave of him," Maia said, adjusting her place in George's lap so she stopped sliding off. "Snuffles said Andromeda was a champion dueller."

"Yeah, but she's no jinx-happy Mad-Eye," Fred pointed out. "And as soon as Tonks was old enough for them to enjoy it, they'd pull pranks on her! And every Halloween, too!"

"I liked them," Opal declared, eyeing Cedric's ice-cream hungrily. "Are you going to eat that, Cedric? Because Mrs Weasley says I have to build my strength back up—" Laughing, they made their way out of Diagon Alley; Cedric had surrendered the last of his ice-cream to Opal, who hummed happily as she sucked on it, her sticky little fingers clutched in Maia's hand as they walked back to Grimmauld Place.

Post-transformation, Opal was still a little tired, and it was with a breath of relief that they closed the bedroom-door on her after tucking her into bed after an early tea. The house had paused, still; in the lull that accompanied the latest argument between Mrs Weasley and her twin sons—apparently, for "Apparating every few feet and charming everything they met"—only _The Who_ playing in the studio echoed upstairs.

Maia, aware that the twins would probably like a little time to themselves to simmer down, plot matricide and put the argument behind them, stayed in the den for a little while, playing a game of chess with Ron; proof-reading a document being drawn up by Hermione with some of the essays, documents and books Professor Dumbledore had outlined for Maia to inquire into; acquired the details of each Quidditch League team's colours and emblems from Ginny, and helped Neville with his Transfiguration homework.

When she made her way tentatively to the attic, the twins had turned the pocket-wireless off, and there was an incredibly stubborn set to their jaws as they worked diligently, a silent mutiny against Mrs Weasley she knew nothing about. The atmosphere was cool, tense; Maia quietly sat down on her stool at the work-table, drawing her journal and the potion-ingredients and things she had picked up in Diagon Alley toward her.

"You'd think after perfect Percy abandoning ship, she'd lay off _us_," George said quietly, his cheeks hollow as he measured something out carefully, his jaw working, before adding the contents of the brass weighing-scale dish into his cauldron.

"She's just wants what she thinks is best for you," Maia said softly.

"But she doesn't _listen_," Fred growled. "We don't _want_ Dad's life; we've never been the type to want an office career."

"I hate it when she yells at us—"

"Especially when we've done nothing wrong—"

"That she knows of."

"Guess suspicion's enough," George sighed heavily, looking _upset_. If things between the Weasley parents and their third son, the defecting prefect Percy, were tense, Maia knew it did nobody any good to take it out on other people, but the twins had a way of pushing Mrs Weasley's buttons without intending to, just being perfectly normal, being _themselves_, and Mrs Weasley had a propensity lately to explode for every little thing they, or Ron or Ginny, did wrong. The ruffled feathers caused by one child were causing the mother-hen to lash out at her other offspring.

"When she starts in on us about Bill and Charlie being so _perfect_, I wish she'd just drop dead!" Fred said, shoving his silver-knife down on the tabletop rather viciously.

"You don't mean that," Maia said quietly, staring at him.

"Would be easier," Fred declared, his jaw working; Maia didn't miss that George was staring at his twin, silent but wearing a wary, warning expression. "She wouldn't constantly have to strangle us with her apron-strings."

Maia stared at him.

"Don't…say things like that," she said, icy rage firing her veins. She knew he probably didn't even mean it, that it was his own anger that was talking, his frustration over Mrs Weasley coddling the others and always scolding them, making it impossible for them to do what they really wanted in life, to keep it a secret up in the attic, but Maia had never, in her memory, had a mother. And whatever her present faults, Mrs Weasley was their _mother_.

Suddenly sick of being in Fred's presence, when he took so much for granted, Maia picked up her things, and made her way to the door. "You don't _know_…" Pausing at the door, she realised her eyes were burning and blurry because she was _crying_. Glaring, upset, at Fred, she said throatily, "I know exactly how you'd feel if you woke up tomorrow morning and you realised you didn't have a family."

Staggered by how much Fred's comment had upset her, Maia sank onto her bed and let her lip tremble as hot tears streaked down her cheeks.

"You look happy," said a deep voice, and Maia grimaced, more tears splashing down her cheeks, as the bedroom-door closed gently, and the mattress sank as Sirius sat down beside her. Maia gave a deep shuddering breath, before choking out a sob, shaking. Adjusting himself against the pillows, Sirius drew her into his side, _cuddling_ her comfortingly, stroking her hair. He didn't pry, just let her curl up quietly against his side, listening to the steady beat of his heart as she calmed herself down, drifting into a gentle doze.

She was so _tired_; her bouts of insomnia, working so hard day after day, intellectually as well as physically exerting herself every day…she was doing too many things… But that wasn't the heart of it…

"They shouldn't have t-to _hide_ something they're so passionate and so _good_ at," she murmured, curled up against Sirius' chest, breathing deeply, eyes closed. Tears leaked onto Sirius' shirt, netting her eyelashes together. "She shouldn't make them feel like they're a waste of s-space because they don't want t-to go the way everyone in their family has…"

"Molly will come around," Sirius said softly, stroking her hair.

"B-before or after they follow suit and leave?" she sighed sadly. She didn't want another blowout caused by Mrs Weasley to culminate in the twins running away from home. They had confessed to her that they were seriously considering _not_ going back to Hogwarts for their final N.E.W.T. year, but that everything with Percy had them seriously reconsidering their position. Ironically, they didn't think their mother's heart could take it; now she was coming dangerously close to driving away another two of her sons.

"The twins love their family, and they've got their hearts in the right place," Sirius said, squeezing her gently.

"Sometimes that's not enough, though, is it?" Maia sighed, depressed. She didn't like that Mrs Weasley's twin-sons were probably the most brilliant of all her children…but Mrs Weasley couldn't support their dream. "This is all they want, in the whole world…"

"So, these tears?" Sirius said softly, after a moment. "Did you and the twins have an argument?" Maia didn't know how to answer that; she pulled herself up to sit beside Sirius, his arm still around her but letting her lean against the pillows, her head resting heavily on Sirius' shoulder. "You want to tell me what's got you crying?"

It was a while before Maia answered, and when she did, her voice was thick with emotion, and her face was shining with tears. "I _miss_ Diane."

That's what it all came down to.

She had lost the only person she had ever been close to, the only family she'd thought she had; she had lost not only her mother-figure, but her oldest and very greatest friend. She had lost the person she had spent every _day_ with since she was two years old. Diane was _gone_… And Maia…now understood what it meant to truly _lose_ someone, to have to wrap her head around the fact that Diane was _never_ coming _back_.

They didn't talk much; but Sirius sat with her. He cuddled with her until the sky was streaked with fuchsia and burning gold, azure giving way to rich royal-purple and inky navy. He sat with her, letting her doze miserably, while he went through the entries in her journal that he hadn't had the opportunity to read, the ones that had been penned in around the time Neville and Cedric had arrived in Grimmauld Place, when things had…changed again. When it had stopped being just been the two of them, and Remus…

When he finished reading, Maia took back her journal, hugging it to her front; after changing behind the folding-screen, Sirius tucked her into bed, drawing her curtains, and left her to sleep. And she did. She drifted off, into a deep, rich sleep full of memory, and imagination; she dreamed of Diane. She dreamed of _Fabergé_ eggs and of tubes of shimmery lip-gloss; she dreamed Opal, twenty years old and beautiful, happy; and she dreamed of Balian, with her brother and sisters, together, _alive_, laughing; and she cried silently into her pillow despite her sleep as she remembered her father's voice.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Good start to the chapter…not such a good end. For Maia. But considering she did just lose her best-friend and the woman who raised her, I think Maia's allowed a few tears. Again, I can't _wait_ to write Maia's birthday-present! Y'know, aside from the one that is in fact George Weasley wearing a bowtie…


	26. Chapter 26

**A.N.**: I'm in Plymouth now, having just moved all my junk into my house for the year, so before the madness of dissertation-year starts, I thought I'd update another chapter. This is the repercussions of the twins' words, and what you all knew was coming with the _Order of the Phoenix_ summer.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_26_

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><p>It was the first day in many weeks that she kept entirely to herself. It was the first day she stayed in her room all day; she didn't get dressed, put her hair in a slob Dutch-plait, and didn't move from her room expect to go to the bathroom. Kreacher brought her up trays of food, but perhaps Sirius had told everyone to leave her alone, because nobody knocked on her door to be allowed admittance.<p>

With no-one asking her to do this or that, she sat, propped up against her pillows, and chose a handful of projects to work on for the day, and those only.

Her watercolours were pulled out, sitting by her desk, basking in the sunshine as she enjoyed working on concept artwork for several of her cosmetic products, working carefully out of her journal, the notes she had made during _Madam Primpernelle's_ sessions, recipes from other potions-books on cosmetics, refining recipes she could try out later. She had finished the last of her watercolour paintings, and now a spread of piles of the finished fairytales—the stories edited by Ailith after Maia had penned them—fully illustrated, typed beautifully with the page-layouts sumptuously arranged on her magically-enhanced typewriter, each duplicate of the original paintings and manuscript bound by a single, colour-coordinated ribbon.

She worked on the concept art for several of her cosmetics—_Strip Tease!_, a liquid-eyeliner remover that left eyeshadow and primer in place; _Brow-Zah!_, her combination spool-brush and self-warming, waxy gel that dissolved unwanted hairs, '_For Instant Eyebrow-Grooming on the Go!_'; _Dewdrop_, a silky concealer surrounded by a ring of moisturiser, the recipe incorporating low-concentration spot-healing potions, which blended to any skin-tone, 'Perfect on dark circles, blemishes and fine lines'and'_Adds a Little Radiance_'; _Foam Party!_, a softly-foaming cleansing facial-wash with subtle spot-clearing potion and moisturiser, watermelon-pink in hue, with foaming pearls, scented with lemon, peonies and aniseed; _Smooth Talker_, a finishing powder that blended to any skin-tone; _Icing on the Cake_, a matte blotting crème to combat excess shine; _Dying to Try It_!, the sticks of special-effects hair-dye she was working on; _Nectar_, a squeeze-tube of hair-gel that sparkled like diamonds in high sunshine; and her collection of twenty-eight nail lacquers, with names like '_Honey Buns_'_, _'_Party Till Dawn_'_, _'_Saucy Trollop_'_, _'_Hot Cakes_'_, _'_Up to No Good_'and'_Your Place or Mine?_' She also came up with concepts for several baked powder blushes and bronzers, as well as liquid highlighters, a stain and the umbrella name for a mousse-to-powder blush, _Poppy-Romp_.

When she paused for a break, enjoying the lunch Kreacher brought her up on a tray, she gazed at the collection of unbound fairytales, and knew there was one more she had to do. Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Opal's face flashed in her mind, and with the watercolour illustrations she had done for _The Midsadventures of Opie_ pinned to her wall, she set out a colour-palette of predominantly warm-browns, golden-fawns and terracotta, with tiny splashes of pink, forest-green and violet, and a vibrant sunflower-yellow for Goldilocks' little frock, Black-Eyed Susan flowers in the vases in the bears' house, and she used Opal as her model for the sunny little golden-haired girl who enjoyed sampling others' food.

She intended to set aside a little of her personal profits from every _Goldilocks_ book sold to start a fund for Opal for when she was older, and penned a small dedication for the introduction, with Opal's photograph. Asking Kreacher to bring her typewriter down from the attic, she sat and typed up the edit of _Goldilocks_ that she and Ailith had written up. Removing the dedication from the typewriter, she set the page down on the top of the pile of duplicated paintings interspersed within the manuscript, and sighed. She had _finished_.

The project Diane had said was so inspired, which Maia had started when she had still been at school, knowing that it was an almost impossible dream, really, and she had _finished_. Barely seven or eight weeks had passed since Diane had died. In that time, Maia had concerted her efforts, and done what Diane must have known she could accomplish. Tying a thin sunflower-yellow satin ribbon around _Goldilocks_, she set it on the dresser with every single other fairytale she had wanted to illustrate and publish. She was _finished_.

_Almost_, she thought, biting her lip and sighing as she glanced at the dresser, with each colour-coded ribbon binding the other fairytales together. Producing books to sell were no good without advertisements to promote them. Seeing how voraciously Mrs Weasley consumed _Witch Weekly's_ every article, Maia taped a fresh sheet of watercolour-paper onto her artist's clipboard, bit her lip, and started painting again.

When she finished with her typewriter, a little over an hour later, she sighed, rubbing her hands over her face—inadvertently streaking watery purple and fuchsia paint from temple to cheek—and yawned. _Now_ she was done.

After showering, and having put on a flimsy sundress, she piled her long hair into a thick Dutch-plait, thinking. She had needed this day to herself; she had never lived with so many people in her life; without her aunt, everything had changed. There was no going back, but when things around here were…disconcerting, upsetting…she had no place else to get back to, no _normal_. She was living in the headquarters for an illegal secret society; and her uncle was wanted for mass-murder.

She just needed…to do what she usually did after a long day inside. Go for a walk.

She shuffled around her room, seeking out the matching double to one of her thin-strapped sandals, and, picking up her bag, she made her way downstairs to the den; Ginny was there, playing with Crookshanks, and Sirius was the only other person in the room, grabbing several records for his next spat of music, and Maia lingered.

"Hi, poppet," Sirius said softly, leaning in to link his arm around her waist in a gentle hug, kissing her temple. "We didn't see you at dinner."

"I wasn't very hungry," Maia mumbled.

"But Kreacher sent you up something?" Sirius asked, tucking a few strands of hair from her forehead. "You did eat it, didn't you?"

"A little," Maia said quietly.

"You coming down?" Sirius asked. "We thought about watching _Life of Brian_. And I _know_ you like _Life_ _of_ _Brian_." Maia gave him a small, tired smile; they had taught Opal the lyrics to, among other things, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'. Sirius reckoned it was Remus' personal mantra.

"I was…going to go…for a walk," she said softly.

"To Diagon Alley?" Sirius asked gently.

"The meadow," Maia mumbled, shrugging slightly. Sirius gazed at her for a moment, then nodded.

"Back before dark, alright," he said, displaying one of the moments of parental concern and responsibility that Mrs Weasley sometimes claimed Sirius was completely without. Nodding, she then made her way out of the house. She Disapparated from the bottom step, all the way to the Hobbit-hole.

It was beautiful, and tranquil, in the meadow. The wildflowers speckled the long grass like gems, the water glittering in a soft breeze as a family of swans idled past on the pretty stream. A whispery rushing noise came from the breeze tickling the trees and grass, something fragrant and sweet on the air coming over from the orchards, while the bees buzzed happily, butterflies flittering from blossom to blossom. The allotment-patches were a riot of colour and groaning with glossy vegetables; and while the rest of the world seemed parched with sun, wilting and brown, here, everything was thriving.

She suspected magic had everything to do with that; also, Neville's dedicated ministrations.

She wandered, not even thinking; her feet knew this countryside from memory, taking her by her favourite route, to visit all her favourite haunts, the bees, the pond, taking in the grasses by the stream, the swing beneath the weeping willow. Her aunt's—_her_ property—consisted _miles_ of countryside; meadows and pretty streams, grassy gentle hills, pretty woods that turned ochre and scarlet in the autumn, conker-trees scattered about, the perfect breeding-ground for wild mushrooms, even a few truffles if she knew where to look, carpeted by bluebells and snowdrops, violets in the summer, wild strawberries and elderflowers. The gentle sloping meadows, the streams, it was a beautiful place. There were parts of the property that she had never visited; the Big House, and the walled gardens around it, but she knew every other inch of her family's ancestral estate like the back of her hand. She had grown up here.

Sitting in the dying sun, she crossed her legs, frowning as she ate her way through a small picnic of fresh raw pea-pods and tomatoes, a handful of cherries and a plum, thinking. She kept glancing over her shoulder at the Hobbit-hole, the glinting windows and shining green round door barely visible in the distance.

It looked…alien. She'd never seen the Hobbit-hole so…impersonal. It was no longer the home, the sanctuary Maia had always loved. It had always been home. _Safe_. She had never looked upon this house without knowing this was the safest place in the entire world, _her_ entire world; she had never looked at this place and felt _nothing_.

Until now. Her chest ached, unnameable pain lashing through her, and she panted, unable to catch her breath as she kneaded the heel of her palm against her heart. Was this what a heart-attack felt like?

She couldn't…stay here.

The person who had made it home was gone; now it was an empty cottage half-built into a beautiful gentle hill in the middle of the prettiest meadow in the countryside, but it wasn't _her home_ anymore.

She felt…adrift. Isolated. _Orphaned_.

The biggest part of who she was had been taken from her; she hadn't realised that her aunt's death would so quickly cause everything else in her life to come tumbling down around her. She held on to Number Twelve as hard as she could to keep from bursting into tears; Grimmauld Place, everything inside it, everyone who lived there, all she had accomplished there and all of the projects she had been encouraged to pursue whilst living there by those whom she had met whilst staying there, had become the new centre of her universe. Her _anchor_.

She at least was falling in love with everything there was to connect with Number Twelve and those who lived there. She couldn't imagine having no anchor whatsoever; or being taken from it, as Harry was.

On a sudden, inexplicable desire to go and see her new friend, as much as he stroppily awaited her visits and was miserable to see her go at the end of them, she finished eating her plum, tossed aside the stone, and Apparated away.

She had been told always to drop in by Mrs Figg's if she was intending to visit Harry; security-measures, for the Order: When Maia got to Mrs Figg's Kneazle-infested house, she found the older woman in a state of disarray.

"Oh! Thank goodness!" she gasped, seeing Maia on her doorstep. Several of her part-Kneazle cats and little kittens came over to purr and rub against Maia's ankles.

"What's wrong?" Maia asked curiously, alarmed by the state she had found the old woman in.

"He's gone and buggered off!" Mrs Figg cried exasperatedly. "After I _told_ him—I _told_ _him_ I'd throttle him if he dared—"

"Who?" Maia asked, reaching down to pluck a teeny kitten the colour of a lion, with the first hints of a mane, off the floor, smiling at it as it preened and stretched in her hand, purring when Maia settled it against her chest, its tiny claws digging into the fabric of her t-shirt; she stroked it, calmed by its purring. It couldn't be very old at all, probably just learned how to walk.

"Mundungus!" Mrs Figg cried. "He's gone after a load of dodgy cauldrons fallen off the back of a broom! After I _told him_—"

"Dung's on duty tonight?" Maia frowned, glancing up from the kitten, her favourite.

"Yes!" Mrs Figg cried. "Only, he's gone and scuppered off! When Dumbledore finds out—nobody to watch Harry—and he's off looking for trouble at the best of times, poor boy, trapped in that house with no-one his own age…"

"I'll go and find Harry," Maia said soothingly. She could just imagine Dung skiving off protection-detail to buy dodgy cauldrons; he had a sort of _Only Fools and Horses_ Dell-Boy aura, only a lot fouler and far less comical. He was a crook, and not a very intelligent one; she'd know better than to skive off on Order business, especially knowing the kinds of magic she knew Professor Dumbledore was capable of. Apparently, according to Hermione, Professor Dumbledore was "_scary_" when angered.

"Would you, my duck!" Mrs Figg sighed, relief washing over her face.

"Of course," Maia smiled sadly.

"He's probably off to the playground," Mrs Figg sighed, toeing her cats into the little hall of her house. "Usually is, this time of night."

"I'll go after him," Maia smiled comfortingly; she bent to place kitty on the ground, and it padded around uncertainly, glancing back at her almost lovingly, before dawdling back into the house.

"They're hungry," Mrs Figg said, glancing down at her cats as they mewled and pounced at each other playfully. "Best get to the shop before it shuts; I've run out of cat-food."

"I'll make sure Harry's okay," Maia said, and Mrs Figg nodded; she turned and made her way to the road, following the path through several quiet alleys to the playground Harry was so fond of haunting. Little Whinging was nicer during the night-time hours; little squares of amber greeted her instead of shrewd, nosy expressions of the Dursleys' square neighbours, who all, for some reason, despised Harry.

The Dursleys seemed to believe that whatever time their son returned home in the evenings was just the right time to be home, while if Harry stayed out later than him, he was home far too late and subject to their _displeasure_ for having to stay up and wait for him to get home before locking the front-door. Maia couldn't blame Harry for wanting to spend as much time away from his remaining family as he could, and thanked her own stars that she enjoyed Sirius' company and was actually growing to love her uncle.

Heat lingered, despite the setting-sun; Grimmauld Place, with its large, airy rooms, charmed fans and copious amounts of refreshing drinks, took the edge off the British heat-wave while the nation prepared for the Olympics in the wake of the much-anticipated Jubilee, pushing hosepipe-bans and arranging summer musical-festivals on the Isle of Wight: but here in Little Whinging, the heat was as oppressive as the square Conservatives who lived there. Maia was very glad of the dwindling light as she followed Harry's favourite route to the vandalised playground. There was only one swing Harry's cousin and his friends hadn't managed to make unusable. Maia had been tempted on previous occasions when she'd seen children disappointed by the state of the playground to magically repair it; Sirius had told her not to, reminding her not to draw attention to the fact that she was coming to little Whinging at least once a week.

As late as it was, the playground gate was locked; surprisingly, no teenagers, drug-dealers or any other kind of troublemaker loitered at the playground; only Harry. Maia eyed the gate and used her previous gymnastics training to vault over it. She knew where Harry lurked; the sole swing. In the half-light, she could see him subtly swinging, the shape of his head distorted by the headphones Maia had made him. He was listening to the evening broadcast of _Radio Rock_.

If she had been in a better mood, Maia might have taken the opportunity to frighten the life out of him. But she wasn't in the mood, and she dawdled up to Harry so he could see her approaching: She was the only person besides Mrs Figg who ever spoke to Harry in Little Whinging. When she stood at the side of the swings apparatus, Harry tugged the headphones off around his neck.

"Snuffles is taking a loo-break."

"He likes to keep his audience updated on his personal-life," Maia sighed, and Harry's lips twitched. He shot her a concerned frown.

"Are you alright?"

"Oh. Yeah," Maia said lightly. She glanced at Harry, blinked, and said tearfully, "_No_." Then she was off, telling Harry what had happened during the day; the inventions; the twins' argument with Mrs Weasley; what Fred had said in anger, leading her to leave, to seek out the Hobbit-hole for sanctuary. She told Harry all the things that seemed stupid to tell anyone else; they didn't _know_. Harry did. Running out of words, she sniffed and wiped her face, a little embarrassed, but relieved she'd been able to get things off her chest.

"You don't usually visit at night," Harry observed.

"No… Snuffles is probably wondering where I went off to," Maia sighed, dusting her hands on her bare legs. Harry donned one headphone for a moment.

"No, he's arguing with Opie about something," he said. "I'd like to meet her," Harry said wistfully. "Snuffles mentions her all the time. Even lets her announce records."

"Yeah, she's his pet," Maia chuckled warmly. "She idolises him."

"It's nice to hear him laugh," Harry beamed. "His voice doesn't sound so hoarse."

"Just wait 'til you see him," Maia beamed. "You won't even recognise him." Harry sighed, glancing at Maia; she knew the question he was dying to ask. "I don't know, Harry… I didn't get any updates before I went out." Harry sighed again, shoulders drooping. A velvety night had fallen around them, stars sparkling and twinkling above in a purple sky; the sunset had been another glorious one. The scent of warm grass, mingling with the heaviness of the night without a breeze was tangible; the only sound came from the main road several streets away. The sound of voices carried on the still air; Maia frowned at the crude song being sung by one member of the approaching gang of boys, all fifteen or sixteen years old. The other boys were laughing; the familiar ticking of expensive racing-bikes only confirmed what she already suspected; Harry's cousin and his gang were approaching, making their way home.

Maia glanced at Harry, whose pent-up frustrations over being abandoned in Privet Drive for weeks had him spoiling for a fight. Glancing from Harry to the boys, Maia reached out a hand, touching his shoulder. "Harry, they're not even worth it," she said quietly.

"I'm just wondering what ten-year-old they've been beating up," Harry scowled. Maia snapped her eyes to Harry's face. Two visits ago, she had been seeking Harry out when she'd come across his cousin and a couple of thug friends beating up an eight-year-old. She'd _really_ had a go at Dudley, terrifying his friends; when she'd told Dudley she was "Harry's friend—_from school_" he'd gone white as a sheet and almost wet himself; Harry had later told her about Mr Hagrid giving Dudley a tail, after she'd escorted the little boy home and explained to his mother what had happened—and who was to blame.

"I thought after our _chat_ Dudley would've stopped terrorising people," Maia sighed. "I suppose frightening him only encouraged him to bully kids even worse."

"I suppose."

"That's always the way," Maia sighed. "I don't care what grammar school your cousin goes to, Harry—he's a _chav_."

"I know," Harry said heavily. "And _I'm_ the humiliation in the family." As the boys disappeared, Harry let out a frustrated sigh. "There you go, Sirius, I kept my nose clean. Exactly the opposite of what you'd have done…" Maia shot him a funny look, and Harry sighed, looking shameful and disgruntled. "In his letters, he keeps reminding me not to do anything stupid."

"Well, he knows who your godfather is," she smiled, winking, and Harry's face relaxed into a smile. Harry sighed, glancing after his cousin, and tucked his pocket-wireless into his jeans pocket, his headphones slung around his neck.

"I'd better get back," he sighed. "Uncle Vernon threatened to lock me in the shed if I came home after Dudley again."

"I can't understand why you don't like spending more time with your family, Harry," Maia said lightly, dusting off the seat of her skirt as she stood up. Harry gave a dry chuckle. As they leapt over the playground gate, walking up Magnolia Road, they spotted Dudley and his gang outside the entrance to an alley. Harry pulled Maia into the shadow of a fragrant lilac so they could eavesdrop.

"—squealed like a pig, didn't he!"

"Nice right hook, Big D!"

"Same time tomorrow?" came Dudley's voice.

"Round at my place; my parents are out."

"See ya, then," Dudley said.

"Bye Dud!"

"See ya, Big D!"

_Big D alright_, Maia thought. There were lots of _D_-words she could use to describe Dudley Dursley. As soon as Dudley's cronies had disappeared, Harry crept out from the lilac and stalked his cousin. Wondering whether Dung had returned—knowing they would have heard him if he had—Maia followed. She just had to get Harry to the Dursleys' front-door.

"Hey, Big D!"

"Oh. It's you."

"How long have you been 'Big D' then?" Harry asked lightly.

"Shut it!" Dudley snarled.

"Cool name," Harry grinned, falling into step beside his cousin. Harry _loved_ goading Dudley, knowing full well Dudley was too terrified of him to react. "But you'll always be 'Ickle Diddykins' to me."

"I said shut it!"

"Don't the boys know that's what your mum calls you?"

"Shut your face!"

"You don't tell her to shut her face. What about 'popkin' and 'Dinky Diddydums'? Can I use them?" Maia bit her lip; Harry could be very funny when he wanted to be. Harry's tone turned cool. "So, who've you been beating up tonight? Mark Evans get it again?"

"He was asking for it."

"Oh yeah?"

"He cheeked me."

"Yeah? Did he say that you look like a pig that's been taught to walk? 'Coz that's not cheek, Dud, that's true!"

"_Harry_," Maia sighed softly, trying not to show her amusement as she gave him a remonstrative glance. They turned into a narrow alleyway, which Maia usually avoided when alone; there were no streetlamps, and the alley was considerably darker than the rest of the route back to Privet Drive. Harry shrugged; their footsteps became muffled in the dark, her sigh falling on still air. "Anyway," she caught up to the boys, frowning at Dudley, "I thought I told you not to lay a finger on any other kids."

"He's from the council-estate."

"And you belong at St Brutus' if this is the way you behave."

"At least I don't go to that freak school of yours," Dudley said scornfully, not meeting Maia's eye; she'd noticed he never did that, never looked her full in the face.

"Well, our 'freak school' as you so call it only accepts the very _best_ that Britain has to offer. It's the Eton of the _Wizarding_ world." Dudley flinched. "The crème-de-la-crème of our world attend Hogwarts. Right, Harry?"

"Oh yeah," Harry agreed, smirking. "Only the best."

"Well, you'd know; you _are_ the best," Maia teased, and Harry flushed. "Gryffindor Seeker, Triwizard champion. You know, Dudley, if you weren't so busy mindlessly spewing your parents' prejudices, you might actually see what a decent boy Harry is despite his upbringing and the way you and your…_friends_ treated him."

"Shut up, you stupid cow!" Dudley snarled, his face contorting. "You don't know what the hell you're on about!" Quick as a flash, Harry had his wand out, glaring venomously.

"Don't call her that!"

"Don't you point that thing at me!" Dudley backed into the wall.

"_Harry_," Maia sighed, her voice gentle, stern; she wrapped her fingers around Harry's wrist, trying to pull his wand-arm down. Harry was pointing his wand right at Dudley's heart.

"Apologise to Maia, now!"

"Harry, stop—"

"Point that thing somewhere else!"

"I said _apologise to Maia_! _Now_!"

"Point it somewhere else!"

Maia plunged her hand into her little bag; her fingertips touched her wand. She'd have to Disarm him before he could jinx his cousin. It was a good thing Hermione had mentioned they _weren't_ on nonverbal-level magic; she had a feeling Dudley would have been crawling his way out of the alley with _feelers_ by now.

"Apologise!"

"Get that thing away from—!" Dudley gave an odd, shuddering gasp: the flawless indigo sky had suddenly been wiped clean of stars, like an _Etch-a-Sketch_. The streetlamps at either end of the alley suddenly went out. Silence fell; Maia felt as if she had been doused in an ice-bath. She gripped her want. Total, impenetrable silent darkness closed in around them. Maia blinked very hard, very quickly.

"The stars have gone out," she said softly, opening her eyes as wide as she could as she gazed up. "…Harry?"

"It wasn't me!"

"Nor me," Maia breathed. For some reason, she was afraid to raise her voice.

"Wh-what're you d-doing?" Dudley stammered, petrified. "St-stop it!"

"I'm not doing anything!" Harry protested. "And don't move!"

"Harry… Any ideas?" Maia asked, as the fine hairs on the back of her neck and her arms prickled.

"I c-can't see! I've g-gone blind! I—"

"Dudley, please be quiet," Maia said gently. She was _freezing_. "Harry…?" She could only remember being this cold _once_ before in her life. "It isn't…?"

"I…I think it is," Harry breathed. "But they can't be _here_."

"What?" Dudley stammered fearfully. "I'll t-tell Dad! Wh-where are you?"

"Dudley, please, be quiet!" Maia implored. "Harry, please, you can't use magic! Let me handle them! Get Dudley and go."

"Can you handle them?" Harry asked. Maia sighed.

"I hope so. I've never got past a Boggart-Dementor," she admitted softly, trying to keep her eyes peeled, trembling in the freezing air. _Confidence_, she thought, hearing Sirius' voice coaching her. _You _can_ do it_. As she heard a long, rattling breath, she felt a plunge of dread like a block of ice in her stomach. "Harry, please, you can't get into trouble—get Dudley and go home!"

"I'm not leaving if you've never faced a Dementor before!"

"What's a Dementor?" a small, scared voice asked.

"It's what's causing the dark and the cold, Dudley," Maia said patiently. "Harry, go! I wonder if this will—"

"C-cut it out! Stop d-doing it! I'll h-hit you!"

"Dudley!"

"_Lumos_!"

Maia heard Dudley's fist connect with the side of Harry's head, sending the thin, black-haired boy sprawling; as Maia shouted, Harry's wand clattered to the ground; Dudley blundered toward the end of the alley. "Dudley—!"

"You _moron_, Dudley!" Harry shouted.

"Grab your wand, it's right by your hand—I'll grab him!" Maia said, shuddering with cold. She loped after Harry's cousin. "Dudley! Stop! You're running right toward it!" There was a horrible squealing yell; Maia grabbed Dudley by the back of his leather-jacket, and he tripped over his feet changing direction. In the narrow beam of light from Maia's wand, Harry found his own; Maia felt the chill strengthen, soft screams coming in and out of focus, louder and softer, like a badly-tuned radio.

"Maia, there's more than one! Dudley, keep your mouth shut, whatever you do, keep your mouth shut!" Harry shouted. "_Lumos_!" Maia's stomach lurched, her mouth tasting of bile; Harry's wand had illuminated a towering, hooded figure, gliding smoothly toward them, hovering inches above the ground, no face visible, only impenetrable darkness inside its hood, sucking on the night as it glided closer.

"Dudley, keep your mouth closed," Maia whispered fearfully. She had never faced a Dementor—never even practiced on a Boggart masquerading as a Dementor. _Concentrate! You _can_ do this! Happy thoughts, Peter Pan…_ But a cloudiness was seeping into her mind like mist, the sounds of screaming coming louder, ebbing away…and that _cold_…

Beside her, Harry cried, "_Expecto Patronum_!" A silvery wisp appeared at the tip of his wand, and disappeared; but that glimpse of a failed Patronus gave Maia a hit of warmth and a moment of clarity; Harry couldn't do it. He _shouldn't_ do it. _Keep Harry from using magic!_ Sirius' voice echoed inside her head, and suddenly his face appeared in her mind's eye, howling with laughter at the twins' escapades at dinner last week, and, as Harry did the same, Maia cried, "_Expecto Patronum_!" Delighting in the rush of warmth, strength and amusement that flooded her body at the thought of the twins and Sirius, she watched the hippopotamus shine beside Harry's silver stag Patronus.

The stag's antlers caught the nearest Dementor where the heart should have been; Maia's hippopotamus charged headlong for the second Dementor bearing down on Dudley, lying prone on the floor. Weightless as darkness, the Dementors were flung back, whispering away into nothingness. As the stars popped back into being, Maia's knees collapsed from under her, and she hit the ground, already passed out.

She jumped, someone patting her face, crouched over her; the sound of clattering tins and whimpers accompanied a cloyingly-warm breeze. She started, blinking several times, sitting up straighter, she subconsciously gripped her wand tighter.

"They gone?" she croaked, surprised her voice was so throaty, her cheeks burning; had she caught the sun? Her head was pounding as if she'd been in the sun too long.

"Yeah, they're gone," Harry said shakily, checking both ends of the alley.

"How long was I out?" she grunted, completely disoriented.

"Few seconds. Thought I'd check you first," Harry breathed, "as you're the only other one with a wand!" Maia chuckled sluggishly. Maia reached up, wiping her face, surprised to find her cheeks wet; had she been crying? Her entire body felt weak, overheated, shaky, as if she had the flu. A sheen of cold sweat was drying all over her body, making the lining of her dress cling to her. "Amazing Patronus, by the way." Maia glanced up, clarity hitting her like a freight train.

"Oh _no_!" she squealed, clambering to her feet. "Harry, you weren't supposed to use magic! I was to keep you out of trouble 'til Dung got back! They'll kill me—they don't even _know_ what's happened!" She jumped, hearing running footsteps; Harry hid his wand behind his back as Mrs Figg careened wildly into view.

"Don't put it away, idiot boy!" Mrs Figg cried. "What if there are more of them around? Oh, I'm going to _kill_ Mundungus Fletcher!"

"What?" Harry said blankly.

"Maia, my duck—could you let 'em know?" Mrs Figg asked anxiously, wringing her hands. "Dementors in Little Whinging?! It's lucky I'd put Mr Tibbles on your tail to check for trouble! Maia!" Pulling herself together, Maia nodded; focusing as Sirius had taught her, she produced a second perfect hippopotamus Patronus, using the technique Sirius had taught her to use it to deliver messages; '_Dung left before his shift ended; two Dementors attacked me, Harry and Dudley Dursley; both had to use Patronus Charm; all safe; getting them home now_.' She sent the Patronus off, streaking through the indigo sky. Harry gaped.

"Is there a meeting tonight?" she asked, glancing at Mrs Figg. "Will they all see it?"

"I should expect so," Mrs Figg said anxiously.

"Good. Hopefully Madam Bones can run interference," Maia sighed.

"The trouble this is going to cause!" Mrs Figg moaned. "Thank Merlin that you were here, Maia. I've never so much as Transfigured a teabag."

"I don't know that I did much good," Maia mumbled. "Harry used magic."

"Hang on—this bloke Mundungus, he's been following me?" Harry gawked. "It was _him_! _He_ Disapparated from outside my house!"

"Yes, yes, yes! Luckily, Maia popped over to mine; I got her over to you sharpish in case anything—and just _look_ what's happened? What's Dumbledore going to say?"

"Luckily, I think Dung will be on the receiving end of Professor Dumbledore's displeasure," Maia said. "Come on, we'd better get you home," she added to Harry.

"You!" Mrs Figg shrieked at Dudley, still lying on the ground. "Get your fat bottom off the ground! Quick!"

"He doesn't look very good," Maia said softly, glancing down at Dudley, who was a nasty shade of green.

"_You_ know Dumbledore?" Harry gazed at Mrs Figg.

"Of course I know Dumbledore! Who doesn't know Dumbledore? Get up! You useless lump, _get up_!"

"Here," Harry said, and Maia helped him as he bent and hefted Dudley's burly frame off the ground. Dudley could not or would not move of his own accord, trembling and ashen-faced, mouth clamped shut. Together, they managed to stagger toward the end of the alley, entering Wisteria Walk.

"_Nox_," Maia murmured, and her wand stopped giving forth light. Harry did the same.

"Keep your wands out!" Mrs Figg advised. "Never mind the Statute of Secrecy now! Talk about the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery! What's that at the end of the street…? Oh…it's just Mr Prentiss."

"Why didn't you tell me you're a witch?" Harry asked. "All those times I came round your house, why didn't you say anything?"

"I'm a Squib, Harry. And anyway, I had my orders from Dumbledore. I was to keep an eye on you, but not say a word. You were too young," Mrs Figg sighed, wringing her hands. "I'm sorry I gave you such a miserable time of it, Harry. But the Dursleys would never have let you come over if they'd thought you enjoyed it. It wasn't easy, you know."

Mundungus didn't appear: Mrs Figg was beside herself, but Maia wondered if one of the Order had caught up with Dung already to inflict punishment for dereliction of duty. Maia hoped it was Mad-Eye.

"I hope Dumbledore _murders_ him," Mrs Figg muttered furiously.

"Mrs Figg, you should go home," Maia said calmly, though she felt anything but. Her senses were vibrating with an unnatural intensity, her knees shaking, her spine feeling like it was about to snap under Dudley's considerable weight. "I've got things from here; you should get back in case you get more instructions."

"If you're sure," Mrs Figg said, glancing around uncertainly. "Thank you, my duck! What a palaver!"

"Hang on—" Harry blurted, but Mrs Figg had already disappeared. Harry glanced at Maia, frowning. "So Dumbledore's been having me followed?"

"Just to make sure nothing happens," Maia said, with an ironic scoff. "Of _course_ you'd be attacked when Dung was _supposed_ to be watching you!" She readjusted her grip on Dudley.

"You could've told me I was being followed," Harry said indignantly. Maia shrugged.

"What would you have done about it?" she asked. "Harry, these are people who care about you, and your safety—this is your house, isn't it? They all look the same…"

"Yeah, this is us," Harry grunted. They laboured up the front-path, grunting and trembling under Dudley's considerable weight. Maia grunted, kicking out to catch the doorbell with her foot, and a tall, thin shadow approached behind the illuminated glass of the front-door.

"Diddy! About time, too, I was getting quite…quite… Diddy? What's the matter?" Mrs Dursley asked; as one, Maia and Harry ducked away from Dudley. He swayed and vomited all over the doormat.

"Oh, that's nasty!" Maia shuddered, feeling her own stomach flip in response.

"Diddy! Diddy? What's the matter with you? Vernon?! Vernon!" Harry's enormous uncle came charging out of the living-room, helping his wife negotiate their son over the threshold without stepping in the pool of sick. While the Dursleys fussed over their son, Maia glanced at Harry, then grabbed his arm and forced him into the little hall: Maia shut the door, careful of the sick, and as the Dursleys ushered green, clammy-looking Dudley into an armchair, Harry set foot on the bottommost stair.

"_BOY_!" Maia jumped; Harry gave a sigh.

"I'll put the kettle on," she said in an undertone; as Harry made his way resignedly into the living-room, Maia flicked her wand at the doormat, which cleaned itself, and made her way to Mrs Dursley's unnaturally clean kitchen. While keeping an ear out on the argument between Mr Dursley and Harry, straining for signs of anything else unnatural around the house, Maia put the kettle on, searching the scrupulously organised cupboards for _chocolate_. She prepared five cups of tea, found not even a crumb to suggest that chocolate or biscuits had ever been housed in the kitchen. Her little bag bounced against her hip, and she remembered her last visit to Diagon Alley, with the twins and Opal in the sweet-shop, all as bad as each other.

She'd bought a bar of chocolate intended for Sirius, but, with one distraction or the other, she might not have actually given it to him.

She must have shocked Mr Dursley, walking into the living-room with several cups of tea, because he stopped bellowing at Harry long enough to goggle at her. "Who the ruddy hell are you?"

"Maia," she answered simply, handing Mrs Dursley a cup of tea. "Harry, I couldn't find any chocolate…"

"No, you won't," Harry said, eyeing his vast cousin. She handed Harry a cup of tea; Mr Dursley, looking dumbfounded, accepted a fine bone-china cup as she placed one on the little table beside Dudley's armchair.

"Well, I think I have a bit in here," she said tiredly, planting herself on the pristine carpet, resting her teacup on the fireplace, long legs splayed out, and Mrs Dursley's eyes popped as Maia plunged her arm into the little bag. She started pulling things out; several books; the nasty essay on poisons for Professor Snape; a pocket-Sneakoscope; Andromeda's miniature chess-set; a collection of bottles, tubes, pots and vials; the catalogue from the paper-mill and printer; lengths of ribbon; a stink-pellet; Opal's sceptre; a sleeping-bag; her coin-purse; a copper-kettle; a vial of sunburst beads; a handful of Gobstones; a runaway lip-gloss; a spindly piece of silver apparatus that measured potion temperature; a handful of loose photographs; several letters; a _Daily Prophet_; and, finally, still wrapped in thin brown paper, a small bar of chocolate.

"I really should clear this out," she said softly, scooping everything but the chocolate back into her bag. Keeping an eye on the window, she sat with her back to the wall, watching the door, just in case. She took a gulp of tea, revivified by it, and snapped the bar of chocolate into thirds, making the Dursleys jump. "Eat it all," she said, offering Dudley a piece; Mrs Dursley cowered away from her, arms tightening around her son.

"What are you trying to do to Duddy?"

"Give him some chocolate," Maia said patiently, trying not to roll her eyes. She gave Mrs Dursley a stern, no-nonsense look. "If you want him to feel better, you'll let him eat it. Dudley," she said kindly, "Here's some chocolate. Eat it all up, you'll feel much better." Blindly, Dudley brought the proffered piece of chocolate to his lips; his mother watched fearfully, her eyes widening as Dudley's colour suddenly returned.

"Diddy? Diddy, are you alright?" Mrs Dursley asked, panicky, her hands fluttering.

"Feel better?" Maia asked, as Dudley's pale eyes, suddenly focused, gazed at her. He nodded, his huge body relaxing. Maia snapped the last piece of chocolate into thirds again; Mr and Mrs Dursley rejected her in turn, recoiling from her. She popped a bit of chocolate into her mouth, realising…her body relaxed, stopped trembling. She glanced at Harry.

"No word yet from anyone?" she asked. Harry shook his head. As if on cue, making Mrs Dursley slosh tea all over the arm of the chair, Harry choked on his bit of chocolate and Mr Dursley yelled with shock as a silvery Patronus darted through the solid pane of glass at the window; a _werewolf_.

Remus' voice sounded from the werewolf's mouth: "_Amelia's sorting everything out, she'll be there soon to question you; Harry, stay in the house; _don't_ use magic again! Maia, turn Harry's wireless on_." The werewolf Patronus dissipated into nothingness, leaving the living-room rather dim in its absence, and Harry turned to goggle at Maia.

"That was Professor _Lupin_'s voice!" he said, stunned.

"Your wireless, Harry," she said, and Harry dug into his pocket, producing his little wireless. Taking out the little plug for his charmed headphones, he fiddled with the On/Off switch and Sirius' voice suddenly echoed in the silent living-room: "_—sorry to interrupt the record, but news has just come in from a confidential source that two underage wizards were, at twenty-past nine this evening, attacked by two Dementors. If ever there was a reason for removing Dementors from control of the prison, and ending the wizards' alliance with them, I'm sure the unprovoked and unsanctioned attack on two underage wizards in the middle of Surrey is the greatest. Not least because one of the victims is none other than Harry Potter. Word from Maia Black, the second victim, is that both herself, Mr Potter and his Muggle cousin Dudley Dursley are unharmed, but word from a Ministry insider is that the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery was breached by Miss Black and Mr Potter whilst saving their own lives_.

"_The two apparently used the incredibly difficult Patronus Charm, a shield to stave off the effects of the Dementors; having used it in front of Mr Dursley, the Statute of Secrecy states the two should be punished, but thankfully there is sanction in the Reasonable Restriction for the use of magic in front of a Muggle in life-threatening situations_.

"_To all who disagreed with Ministry plans to remove Dementors from Azkaban under the administration of Minister for Magic Godfrey de Lusignan_—"

"That's my grandfather!" Maia blurted.

"—_I hope you re-evaluate your stance on legislation being pushed through _this_ Ministry's cabinet. It could have been your son or daughter. We are very lucky that Miss Black and Mr Potter knew the Patronus Charm_.

"_Or I'd be reporting on one of the greatest tragedies of our age_."

Sirius clicked on a _Kinks _song, 'Waterloo Sunset', and over the music, he said, "_So, a shout-out to everyone at home, keep constant vigilance. If there are more Dementors going after our nation's most beloved heroes, who's next? Remember, chocolate is a marvellous remedy for brushes with Dark magic; after this record I'll read out Dr Clabbert's submission to the first edition of _The Talon_, on how to effectively conjure a Patronus and thus, deflect the attack of a Dementor_." 'Waterloo Sunset' came into focus, and Harry glanced at Maia, eyes wide.

"He's reading it over the wireless?"

"One of the others must've given him _The Talon_," Maia said, biting her lip. "Everyone in England will know about this by the morning."

"I'm surprised the Ministry hasn't contacted me—after that official warning I got for Dobby levitating that pudding three years ago," Harry said. "They said another infraction and I'd be expelled."

"That was a misunderstanding," Maia said. "Sirius is right; this was a life-threatening situation. There's definitely something in Clause C of the Reasonable Restriction about us using magic in front of Dudley if all our lives are in jeopardy." Mr and Mrs Dursley were staring dazedly at Maia and Harry as if they had been temporarily lobotomised.

Sirius' voice filtered over the ending chords of 'Waterloo Sunset', "_A brief note before I read Dr Clabbert's instructions on conjuring a Patronus. Maia, Harry, get home now! And Harry, if you're listening, Madam Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, is on her way to question you about the attack. I'd drag a brush through your hair_." Maia turned to stare at Harry.

"This is serious. Madam Bones is coming _here_," she said, wide-eyed.

"Hold on just one moment!" Mr Dursley roared, making everyone jump. "Your lot have a Ministry? A Ministry of Magic! This explains everything—no wonder the country's going to the dogs!"

"Witches and wizards have their own affairs to sort out, Mr Dursley," Maia said calmly, her voice very cool. "They hardly have the time to get involved with such paltry matters as death taxes, student-loans and Olympic transport." Mr Dursley flushed a nasty shade of magenta at her tone, but perhaps the wand in her hand or the sharp ring of the doorbell prevented him from replying with something very nasty. "I'll get it!" She grabbed the back of Harry's t-shirt to stop him diving for the hall.

Not only square-jawed, monocle-wearing Madam Bones waited on the doorstep; Ailith, still dressed in her work robes, had accompanied her.

"Maia! Good! Still here; I'll interview you here as well, it'll save time!" Madam Bones boomed.

"Ailith?" As Maia gestured Madam Bones inside, Ailith stepped over the threshold and eyed Maia's face thoroughly, looking concerned.

"We got your Patronus in the middle of a meeting," she said, wrapping a slender arm around Maia's shoulders for a hug. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm alright now," Maia said tiredly. "We've all had chocolate."

"Sirius was so _angry_," Ailith said softly, eyes widening slightly. "We had to stop him leaving Headquarters to go and murder Mundungus."

"He hasn't been back yet," Maia frowned, leading Ailith into the living-room, where Mr Dursley was being remonstrated by the forbidding Madam Bones. "But—I meant, what are you doing here?"

"Professor Dumbledore's given me special permission to interview you, and Harry, if he doesn't mind," Ailith said. "We've missed the run for the _Evening Prophet_ but this'll be front-page above-the-fold news tomorrow morning." Ailith sighed gently, still gazing concernedly into Maia's face. "Are you sure you're alright? You're very pale."

"I'm fine," Maia assured her, with a soft smile. She went and put the kettle on again, and brought a cup of tea for Madam Bones, frowning sternly at Harry as he explained what he'd been doing at the playground, talking with Maia and listening to _Radio Rock_on the pocket-wireless Maia had made him—Ailith smiled and winked as she included the details in her notes, accepting her tea with a mouthed "_Thank you_" so as not to interrupt.

Madam Bones was incredibly thorough with her questioning; on the spot, Maia made up that she'd reached Surrey via the train network and the local bus-service, which was met with silent approval by Madam Bones, who knew Maia could Apparate but didn't want to have to put it on official Ministry records that she had been illegal Apparating underage to Little Whinging. After Harry and Maia both gave their accounts of what happened, Madam Bones ordered a gaping Mrs Dursley and a purple-faced Mr Dursley out of the room when they'd made a flap about her questioning Dudley. In a room, alone, surrounded by a wizard and three witches—one of them incredible intimidating—seemed to be Dudley Dursley's worst nightmare, but with subtle nudges from serene Ailith, he answered Madam Bones' questions, giving his Muggle perspective on what happened, reinforcing Harry's and Maia's claims of Dementors with his recollections of sensory deprivation, memories he wouldn't talk about, the gripping, hopeless cold…the feeling he'd never be happy again.

When Madam Bones had finished her interviews, she rolled up several long scrolls on which a quill had been transcribing their testimonies, and made her departure. She dropped her professional, intimidating demeanour to say, "I'm very glad you're all unharmed." She made her exit, to meet a team of wizards who were trying to find evidence of the Dementors in the alley—apparently, all magic and, thus, magical _creatures_, left a residue, so they could substantiate Harry's and Maia's claims—before going to interview Mrs Figg. They were left alone with Ailith, who had taken notes throughout the entire interview process, and now asked questions of her own. She spoke to Harry, and Dudley, and finally Maia; when she had ten scrolls full of notes, she tucked them in her stunning _Hermés_ 'Kelly' bag (which Mrs Dursley had clocked immediately and spent the better part of twenty minutes gazing at enviously) and bid the boys goodbye, slipping Harry a sealed envelope, "from Sirius". She glanced at Maia and sighed. "I told him I'd bring you home, so I'll drop you off in London before I go and talk to Mrs Figg and the boys from Madam Bones' department."

"Er…alright," Maia said, glancing at Harry.

"Don't worry," Ailith said softly. "You'll see each other very soon. Dudley? Thank you for answering my questions." Dudley blinked dazedly; Maia glanced uncertainly at Harry again.

"Will you be alright?" she asked. "Your aunt and uncle…"

"Nothing I can't handle," Harry said, smiling grimly; Maia followed Ailith out of Number Four, closing the front-door as she saw Harry tearing into Sirius' letter, running upstairs. At the end of the garden-path, Ailith offered her arm; they Disapparated, reappearing in Grimmauld Square.

They had to walk only a few paces before the flowerpot-strewn porch-steps of Number Twelve appeared, the barbecue tucked amongst tall agapanthus, a climbing rose, ranunculus and rosemary.

No sooner had Maia knocked on the door than she was being hauled over the threshold in a chokehold.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Thoughts? I wrote Mrs Figg as I would my nanny, who calls all of her grandchildren "my duck", although at 81 she's considerably older than Mrs Figg!


	27. Chapter 27

**A.N.**: Walked to Plymouth city-centre. Bought loo-roll and a TARDIS poster. Feet hurt, so now resting! Updating a chapter is within the limit of my physical exertions, so I shall treat you all.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_27_

* * *

><p>"Maia! Are you alright? Are you hurt? What kept you? Is Harry okay? What <em>happened<em>? Tell me everything! What do you need?"

"_Oxygen_!" Maia wailed, her voice muffled by Mrs Weasley's immense bosom, struggling to remain upright as Mrs Weasley hugged the life out of her, arms flailing to catch someone's attention.

"Mum, you're strangling her—"

"Two _Dementors_ attacked you?"

"What the _hell_?!"

"Molly, let go of her," Sirius sighed, and Maia was prised from a pale Mrs Weasley's grip. Concern radiated from Sirius as he silently looked over Maia's face, Mrs Weasley fussing almost hysterically over how pale and sickly Maia looked, feeling her forehead, clucking over how Harry was, whether Madam Bones had gone easy on them during their testimonies, how Harry's family had reacted to the attack; Maia ignored her, and hugged her uncle.

Sirius cradled her head, cuddling her close, stroking her long, curly hair soothingly, and she mumbled, "I'm sorry."

Sirius squeezed her. "So you leave for the Hobbit-hole and end up in Surrey?"

"I know," Maia said hoarsely, a tear sliding down her cheek as she hugged Sirius, gripping the back of his shirt.

"The Dementors did a number on you?" Sirius asked quietly, and she felt him stifle a shudder. She ducked her head to his shoulder.

"I heard them screaming…out of tune. I didn't hear his voice this time," she said softly. "Harry had already conjured silver vapour. Cleared my head, and then… And then I saw your face in my head and I knew I could do it." Sirius squeezed her tight. "You and the twins, laughing the other night at dinner." Sirius chuckled softly, releasing her, and Maia wiped her face. Mrs Weasley finished a quick conference with Ailith, who exchanged a brief word with Sirius before he said, "Thank you," kissed her cheek and locked the front-door after her. There was a loud _CRACK_, Mrs Weasley shrieked in annoyance, and Maia let out a strangled yelp, her falling-out plait flying, as she found herself lifted off her feet, partially winded, half-colliding with the floor as whoever had tackled her cushioned their landing; this would have worked out for her if someone hadn't tripped, yelped and landed heavily on top of her.

"_Ow_!"

"Fred, you numpty! Get off—"

"Trust you two—"

"What?"

"I think I've broken something!" Fred tumbled off Maia, George shifting her off him to dig a hand into his jeans pocket, whipping it out again with a hiss and a flash of broken glass, blood beading at his fingertips.

"I'm sorry!" Fred wailed, holding Maia in what she supposed was a headlock-hug.

"I know."

"I didn't mean anything by it!"

"I know that now."

"I was just upset and angry! I shouldn't have said it."

"It's alright."

"Do you forgive me?"

"Will you release me if I say yes?"

"Oops. Sorry! There you go."

"Thanks."

"If we're to be partners, we can't let meaningless words tear us apart."

"I had to get out of here for a little while." George healed his fingertips, repairing a little glass bottle and cleaning the mess in his pocket; clambering off the floor, offering Maia his hands, she accepted his help and was hauled off the floor. He gathered her up into a hug, a proper one…a _close_ one; he pressed his lips gently against her shoulder, hands splayed low on her lower-back, as her arms threaded around his neck. It was the first time she'd seen him all day.

"Hi," she murmured against his neck.

"Hi," he replied softly. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Maia sighed. George broke full contact, taking her upper-arms in his hands rather than her waist.

"So, what, we all get in a snit and you go off to pick a fight with two Dementors, you weirdo?" Maia gave him a watery smile, chuckling softly.

"We thought you already had a creative outlet," Fred spoke up.

"This thrill-seeking, hell-raising, adrenaline-chasing behaviour—"

"It's just not healthy," Fred frowned.

"Not least because you did it without us!"

"You've been spending too much time with Harry," Sirius interjected, leading Maia upstairs; the twins—and Ginny, Neville, Cedric and Hermione, whom Maia hadn't really registered waiting on the stairs—laughed.

"Harry, the twins, you," Maia shrugged. "Place just got to me today."

"Well, next time, how about you go down to Florean's to get yourself an ice-cream?" Sirius suggested, with an exasperated shake of his head. "Chill out with a chilled gelato!"

"Deal," Maia sighed softly.

"Listen, as soon as Amelia gets back, we'll have to reconvene the meeting," Sirius said. "Opal's already in bed, but you lot can do what you like, within reason."

"Excellent—I'll get the orgy lamp," Fred said, with a blazing grin.

"Hey, who gave you the first edition of _The Talon_, anyway?" Maia asked Sirius.

"We did," the twins chirped together. George added, "Don't worry, it's only a copy. The original's still safe upstairs."

"I just can't believe _you've_ not shown me the copies," Sirius said, glancing at Maia.

"It's supposed to be a _secret_ paper."

"No good having a secret if no-one knows about it," Sirius said.

"Did the twins show you the other editions?"

"I've got copies, but I've not read them yet," Sirius said. "If you don't end up an inventor, tomb-raider or Minister for Magic, you might consider a career in editing. Barnabas Cuffe is certainly bringing about an early demise to his career."

"At least you've got something to write about for the next _Talon_ reading," Hermione smiled; instead of following Sirius into the den, Maia made her way upstairs to her room; the others piled in, asking for her account of what had happened; in turn, the others told Maia about the Order's immediate reaction to her talking Patronus.

"I've never seen Professor Dumbledore so _angry_," Hermione breathed, lowering her hands from where they'd been hovering over her mouth, her eyes wide. "Not even in our third-year when the Dementors came to the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match."

"He was _scary_," Ginny shivered, wide-eyed.

"I don't envy Dung when he scuttles out from whatever rock he's hidden under," Fred said, with an ugly look.

"If Dumbledore gets to him before Mum does, you mean!" George added.

"She was livid!" Ginny breathed.

"Yeah, Fred and George actually had to _restrain_ her," Ron smirked.

"It's so refreshing, when it's not our fault," George sighed, smiling complacently. Downstairs, the doorbell rang; Ginny slinked off to spy on the visitor. Returning hastily, she grinned, "It's Madam Bones!"

"Quick!" Fred hissed, and George Disapparated, returning with the shell of one of Maia's pocket-wirelesses, fiddling with a button on the top.

"Er—is that from my stock?"

"Don't worry, we'll reimburse you," Fred said, as George clambered back onto the bed beside Maia.

"We just needed a prototype to make revisions to," George said, glancing at Maia. "Our receptor will be an upright oval, three spheres; one to record, the larger as a speaker, the last to control the bug."

"You've started them already?"

"Of sorts. We Transfigured a tiny sphere to match the chandelier in the dining-room; stuck it on this morning before anyone was up," Fred said.

"That's how we knew about the Dementors," Hermione said, giving the wireless bug-receiver a faintly disapproving look.

"We were listening in on the meeting," George said, twiddling a dial.

"Heard the majority of Snape's report before your Patronus showed up," Fred said, with satisfaction.

"Here we are," George said, his voice hushed as he twiddled the dial again, and several other, familiar voices issued from the apparatus—

"—_they were up in arms that I'd already got to them before the Muggle's memory could be wiped, probably_," Madam Bones said tersely.

"_They weren't going to try and do a cover-up_!"

"That's Chummy," Ginny whispered, hushed by her brothers as Til Hughes spoke; "_There have been mutterings from inside Fudge's office that they've been brainstorming ways to discredit Potter—and Dumbledore_."

"_You think the order came from inside the Ministry_?" Mrs Weasley's voice was white-hot with fury.

"_Unless You-Know-Who found a couple of rogues wherever he and Wormtail are hiding_," Tonks said.

"_Only a Head of Department or someone in Fudge's advisory cabinet has the necessary clearance to give Dementors orders_," Madam Bones sighed.

"_And if it was someone in Fudge's office, there'll be no end of paperwork covering their tracks_," Chummy said angrily. "_Self-serving bureaucrats, they'll know every loophole in the system to go undetected_!"

"_Trying to slander Dumbledore in the _Prophet_ is one thing_," Mrs Weasley said, gasping softly, "_but setting two Dementors on a fourteen-year-old boy is something else entirely! To think, if they'd not known the Patronus Charm_…!" Mrs Weasley let the sentence hang on the air.

"_Well_," Sirius sighed heavily, "_they did know it. And I for one have personal experience being indebted to Harry for it. It's only a pity he and Maia have ever had the need for it_."

"_Well, you did right by Maia, teaching it to her_," Kingsley's slow voice said.

"_Only her first brush with a Dementor, she produced a fully corporeal Patronus_," Madam Bones boomed proudly. "_Most_ impressive!"

"_If Maia went for the Minister's post tomorrow, I'd vote for her in a heartbeat_," Tonks said brightly, to general chuckles.

"_Tremendously talented girl_," Mrs Longbottom said proudly. "_She has all Godfrey's power—and integrity_!"

"_Balian would be so proud of her_," Sirius said sadly, and someone blew their nose; someone sniffed; Mrs Weasley whispered, "_Poor Balian_" tearfully.

After a moment, Mrs Weasley said, "Will _the Ministry try to cover this up_?"

"_Well, I'm personally making sure this has the opposite effect Fudge's office wanted, trying to discredit Harry_," Mrs Bones said. "_Nice boy. Not at all how Skeeter painted him, the silly cow. But this will go a long way getting support to remove Dementors from Azkaban_."

"_And if Fudge leans on Cuffe not to print_," Sirius growled softly, "_he obviously doesn't realise there's another output for the news. _Radio Rock _listeners will have the truth shoved down their throats whether they want it or not. We'll make it so Cuffe has no choice but to ignore his pocketbook and print, even if the Ministry doesn't approve_."

"_You'd think Fudge owns the paper, the way he leans on the_ Prophet," Mrs Weasley hissed angrily.

"_Well, it's not owned by much better stock than Fudge_," Kingsley said calmly.

"_I'd better get back_," Madam Bones said. "_This is going to keep me at the office for weeks_." Goodbyes were said, and Kreacher showed Madam Bones out; someone sighed.

"_When is the guard leaving to get Harry_?" Tonks asked curiously.

"_Three nights' time_," Sirius said. "_Kingsley and Moony have already volunteered to collect him. It's better this way than with an armed entourage. Someone Harry trusts, and the deputy-head of the Auror Department, if things go pear-shaped_…"

"_Can't believe Ailith got to meet him_," Tonks sighed wistfully. George twiddled the dial so the volume turned low as talk turned to chatter about Harry, the family that owned _The Daily Prophet_, Mrs Weasley asking Sirius whether he could teach her children the Patronus Charm, debating what the Ministry would do about the Dementor attack, everyone thankful for Maia's talking Patronus, Sirius announcing the attack on _Radio Rock_, glad they had Madam Bones' friendship, and everyone in Maia's room glanced at each other.

"They think someone _inside_ the Ministry ordered the attack?" Hermione breathed, appalled.

"Well, if the rest of Fudge's office are like Percy and that Umbridge woman," Fred scowled, "I wouldn't put it past them."

"They're right," Cedric said quietly, "we _are_ lucky Madam Bones is with us. She's got a lot of pull, not just inside the Ministry. She's a powerful witch, and she's fair. Dad says she gets a lot of support in the Wizengamot."

"Do Dementors fall under your father's office?" Maia asked curiously. "Or are they part of the Department of Magical Law-Enforcement?"

"Both, I'd expect," Hermione answered.

"And it'll go a long way to get rid of them from Azkaban that Dad and Madam Bones are supporting the measure," Cedric said.

"If the Ministry are trying to discredit Harry and Dumbledore," Ron sighed, "they're doing a lousy job. Malfoy'd be better at coming up with ways to ruin Harry's reputation than any Senior Undersecretary."

"I'd rather not think of Malfoy in the Ministry," Hermione said, frowning. "He and Umbridge would get on a treat."

"Can't _believe_ the Ministry would try and sabotage Harry with Dementors," Maia murmured, lying on her stomach alongside George's long body. He draped an arm heavily over her waist, and it was a comforting weight and warmth. "They'd have created far more trouble for themselves if Harry had been Kissed than we'll get into for conjuring Patronuses."

"Politicians are idiots," George sighed, resting his head next to hers. "That's old news… You okay?"

"Tired," Maia said, hiding a yawn behind her hand.

"Did you have chocolate?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Want to work upstairs with us tonight?"

"Not too late."

"We won't be; we went to bed at three and got up at five to check on some of our potions."

You need to sort that out," Maia said, frowning softly at George, who yawned.

"Our righteous anger fuelled our creative fervour."

"And prompts you to use a lot of adjectives, apparently," Maia smiled, chuckling.

"Oh, by the way, I fixed your hair-dye sticks," George said, with a soft grunt as he turned onto his side.

"I thought we'd agreed to keep Church and State separate," Maia frowned.

"There was an unattended cauldron," George said, smiling sincerely. "You know I can't help myself."

"So what was wrong with it?"

"The concentration of—"

"—the bloody _freesia_ syrup!" Maia groaned, patting her fist to her forehead in frustration. "That's where the stickiness was coming from!"

"You just have to double the concentration and halve the measure of syrup," George said, and Maia nodded, sighing. _Of course it was the freesia syrup_.

"I think I could get away with increasing the concentration just by fifty percent," Maia said, biting her lip thoughtfully. "I just wanted the scent. It doesn't actually contribute anything to the chalks."

"Well, if you can perfume your stuff with bacon and eggs, no girl would ever feel unwanted," Fred spoke up, making everyone laugh.

"What's all this?" Hermione asked, sitting at Maia's desk, and she lifted up the stack of A3 watercolour pages, full of Maia's product concept-art. The topmost poster featured concepts for _Borealis_, a crème stick with triple highlighting hues, one rose-champagne, one rose-pink, the other subtle pale-bronze, which could be applied in one sweep of the stick to the cheekbone, contouring and highlighting, blended beautifully, and the crème was subtly scented with tuberoses. Two concepts for baked powders featured on the next page, _Beach Bum_, 'Outdoors Glow for the Indoors Girl', a rose-gold bronze subtly scented with coconut and mango, and _Faking It_, a 'frisky' coral-watermelon glow with subtle gold undertones, subtly scented with passion-fruit.

"Today I was working on my cosmetics," Maia said, and Ginny dived for the posters. "Oh!" She glanced at the twins, her eyes widening. "I had an idea earlier, when I was going through my fairytale illustrations. You were thinking of expanding your feminine lines in the shop, right?"

"Yeah. Joke-cosmetics and love-potions can only go so far," Fred said.

"And we don't want people to think we're sexist," George said, with a solemn shake of his head.

"Well, I was looking at my illustrations of the Frog Prince, you know, the Aztec princess, the fuchsia poison-dart frog?" Maia said, and when she gestured for them, Hermione handed over the pile of concept artwork posters. Maia rifled through them until she found the one she wanted. "I thought of bath-beads, in the shape of tiny frogs, which fill the bath with bubbles—iridescent fuchsia and gold, and perfumed with hibiscus, jasmine and chilli, and the water leaves a faint dusting of gold shimmer on the skin. I want to call them _La Dorada_—the Gilded Woman. I thought I could advertise them alongside my _Frog Princess_ book."

"Oh, _cool_!" Ginny grinned, peering over Maia's shoulder at the paintings.

"Yeah, and then I thought of more luxury bath-items, you know, things that _don't_ turn into maggots or cockroaches when you add water," Maia said, shooting George a deadpan look, and the twins grinned unrepentantly. She pulled out the other poster for bath-products. "'_Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice…_' I thought I could develop a collection of scented bath-sugars with different special-effects, like soothing scents, moisturising, cleansing. I thought of packaging them in 'single-servings', in small vellum sachets; you could just grab a handful to keep stock in the bathroom if you wanted a treat…"

"Very cool," George grinned, taking the two posters of concept-artwork and examining them with bright eyes. "The cost of producing them would be negligible."

"And they're a fun, luxury item," Maia said. "You could charge what you wanted, perhaps expand the range, I could create facial-scrubs and that foaming-cleanser in complementary scents to go alongside the bath-sugars, you know, put together sets." She shrugged.

"You've been busy today," Fred remarked, going through Maia's other concept artwork. "What are these?" He showed her the pages filled to the edges with paintings and details, notes in ink and mathematical sums.

"Oh. Kits," Maia said, beaming. "I've been working on recipes for baked powders and liquid highlighters, a collection of eye-shadows, a full collection of nail-lacquers, so I thought I'd put together makeup kits with samples of different products."

"They look like books," George said thoughtfully.

"Yep," Maia smiled fondly at her artwork. The _Barefoot & Topless_ makeup kit she had painted concepts for was designed like a small cardboard 'book', a sandy rose-bronze colour that opened to reveal a shimmery soft-pink lining, the cover featuring text inspired by the texture of coconuts, with a hazy _Blue Lagoon_-esque beach scene, with a tiny rose-gold shell printed on the spine. _Barefoot & Topless_ featured a sample-pot of _Drenched!_ bluebell-scented moisturiser, a sample of _Beach Bum_ baked rose-gold bronzer with a miniature blush, a full-size 'After Sex' _Pucker Up_ lip-crayon, a full-size _Brow-Zah!_ eyebrow-groomer, and a full-size _Half-Baked_ crème-to-powder eyeshadow in 'Birthday Suit'. The _Stardust_ kit was contained in a matte silver 'book' printed with tiny gloss stars sparkling like starlight, opening to reveal a midnight-navy lining printed with the Pleiades constellation, with a star printed on the spine; _Hello, Sunshine_ featured a stylised sunburst in vibrant gold, shimmering against an iridescent golden-bronze background, with a powder-blue lining, periwinkle font, and a sun on the spine. _English Rose_ featured a rose-pink 'book' that opened to reveal a Van Gogh-esque painting of a girl in a rose-garden, on the spine, a single rose, and the typeface was vintage and flirty. Each kit featured a different baked powder or liquid highlighter, mascara or blush, lipstick, finishing-powder or toner.

The last in that set was _Perky!_, which she wanted to feature a sample-size bottle of _Foam Party! _face-wash, a full-size _Dewdrop_, a full-size _No Falsies, Please_ mascara, a sample-size _Wine Me, Dine Me, Define Me_ contour-highlighter and mini brush, a full-size _Lipstick Queen_ (the perfect red lipstick) with a sample bottle of _Not On My Pillow!_ makeup-remover, all contained in a clear, unbreakable glass 'book' with interchangeable linings and a mirror in the lid, with a pair of puckered lips printed in coppery-rose on the spine.

She had also been working on the designs for a collection of fairytale makeup kits, to market alongside her illustrated storybooks, each contained in a 'book' like the other kits, slightly larger, with the colours reflecting those used in her illustrations, the Frog Prince one made of clear, unbreakable glass, with a tiny gold frog on the edge, so it could be used as a clutch-purse; as well as two larger kits, one called _The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships_, different products put together under three skin-tone ranges based on the paintings she had done of the Judgement of Paris, with Aphrodite, Athena and Hera, the other a selection of her personal favourite inventions.

"I just have to…you know…_make them_," Maia said, and the twins chuckled. George went through her concepts for the fairytale cosmetic-sets, while Ginny giggled over the names of her nail-lacquer collection, and the 'Hogwarts' collection—_Charisma_, iridescent ruby; _Charm_, glowing amber; iridescent sapphire _Wit_ and sparkling emerald _Cunning_; as well as _Glitter,_ full-coverage gold glitter; _Crackle_, a matte black shatter topcoat; _Shimmer_, a clear bronze-glitter topcoat; and _Shine_, a metallic silver polish.

"What are these?" Ginny asked curiously, picking up another poster.

"_Dazzle Drops_," Maia said, shrugging. "They're smaller bottles of special-effects polish."

"What kind of special effects?" Ginny asked, her eyes lighting up.

"Um…diamond-sparkle, some of them glow luminously in champagne-rose, and starlight; one is colour-change, and a few are glow-in-the-dark, rose, lilac, pea-green, gold, rose-gold, copper and ruby-red…some of them are clear, or translucent, with scents—different flowers, fruits and sweets, and one has similar ingredients to Amortentia, which makes it smell like whatever attracts you the most. The twins are helping me work on some that glitter like fireworks, in gold, champagne-pink, cornflower-silver, thistle sea-green and red-gold, silver-green, sapphire-bronze and coal-amber for the Hogwarts colours," Maia said, smiling, and Ginny grinned. Maia climbed off the bed, tugging open the top drawer of her dresser, bringing out a small box, in which several nail-lacquers were collected. "Here. These are the special ones I made up for the Twelve Dancing Princesses nail-collection." _Danced Their Shoes to Ribbons_ was a glinting liquid copper-gold; _Proof of their Dalliances_ was a matte silver polish; _Enchanted Ball_ was an iridescent navy that glowed like candlelight and starlight; _Sweets for the Sweet_ was a soft pinkish-gold polish that dried to the texture of silk-tulle, scented with champagne and raspberries; and _Through the Groves_ was a translucent gold topcoat that sparkled like diamonds.

"These are _so cool_, way better than the girly stuff the twins are trying to make," Ginny said, grinning from ear to ear; at this, the twins squawked indignantly. "Well, you don't come up with _lovely_ things for girls, just joke-cosmetics and those foul Bath-Bombs."

"As a matter of fact, we are working in partnership with Pleiades Inc. to start filling our shelves with feminine products with no joke aspects but plenty of flirty, luxurious side-effects," Fred sniffed. "And for your insults, you are _forbidden_ from buying them."

"I'll just ask Maia or Hermione to buy them for me," Ginny said, sticking her tongue out.

"Could you do something to tame my hair?" Hermione asked Maia drily. "When I went to the Yule Ball it took me about four hours to get my hair manageable." Maia chuckled; Hermione did have a rather rambunctious mane of brown hair, which reminded her of a lion's mane. Canting her head to the side, she gazed at Hermione, thinking. A product to tame even the most rebellious hair would probably be greeted with much anticipated, especially if packaged in a fun way, aimed at young-adults, with added nourishing vitamins, to increase shine, with a yummy scent. And Maia and the twins _had_ just finished a gruelling session at _Madam Primpernelle's_ on hair-products. She had been enthralled by the idea of a mist that added special-effects to hair, like glinting pricks of starlight, beautiful scents, iridescence to add over her hair-dye sticks, but the idea of a taming serum was a product many girls would like.

As the door opened and someone slid into the room, Fred flung himself across George's waist, squashing his twin into the bed in a bid to hide the 'bug' receiver from Ailith, who had returned, in casual, comfortable clothing, looking tired; she raised an eyebrow at Fred and George, amused, but didn't ask, as was best where the twins were concerned.

"Molly's made a chocolate-cake if anyone's interested," she said, smiling. "We're all going to have a bit before bed."

"Cake?" Ron asked; the boys all perked up at the mention of food, especially cake. Ailith paused before turning to leave, her eyes on the dresser.

"What's all this, Maia?" she asked, pointing idly to the stacks of ribbon-tied manuscripts.

"Oh…"

Ailith gasped softly, her face the picture of delight and pride as she picked up the poster advertisement Maia had finished earlier. "You've finished them."

"This afternoon, actually," Maia said sadly, gazing at the poster. She still loved it, after stepping away from it for several hours.

Her favourite of the twelve Dancing Princesses held a waving Goldilocks on her hip; Hansel and Gretel giggled hysterically as a fuchsia frog with a tiny gold crown hopped up and down inside Puss' boots; the Gingerbread Man waded amongst locks of Rapunzel's shining red hair as she perched at the top of Jack's beanstalk and gazed down at Little Red, who tugged at Cinderella's apron-strings; Thumbelina used the Swan's neck as a slide; rose-cheeked brunette Sleeping Beauty stood with her arms around the waists of wheat-blonde Renaissance Beauty and the Little Mermaid with her long hair pulled into glinting gold combs and laurels, while the ghosts of Bluebeard's wives gazed down from the leaves of the beanstalk, one of them dangling a little gold key on a sinuous chain to Snow White as she leaned against a diamond tree-trunk, laughing as a little robin flew to her shoulder.

"'Taking Advance Orders'," Ailith read from the poster. "Sixteen Sickles apiece." She smiled, eyeing the illustrations. "They're wonderful."

"You've finished?" George said, struggling to get up from the bed. "Fred!"

"You should show this to Chummy," Ailith said warmly, indicating the poster, as the twins wrestled on Maia's bed; George victorious, elbowing Fred for his freedom, he clambered off the bed to peer over Maia's shoulder.

"You _haven't_ finished," he frowned.

"Have I not?"

"You haven't mentioned the cosmetics line at all," George frowned. Maia bit her lip, glancing at the poster. She loved it the way it was. The beautiful typeface was laid out aesthetically, fitting perfectly inside the cloudy blue sky she had set out above the illustrations for such a purpose. Perhaps he saw the set of her expression, because George said thoughtfully, "You could slip a little note into each copy before sending them out, instead—then you'd have time to develop the other products while this can go into _Witch Weekly_ and the books are printed."

"Yeah, if you've got prototypes, we've wondered about setting up a stall at the market in Diagon Alley," Fred said, frowning concernedly at Maia before George had nudged him. "You could show off the full line of fairytale-centred stuff."

"Come on, let's go downstairs for some cake, before your mother follows me up," Ailith said, and the twins' eyes widened, before both Disapparated. Mrs Weasley, in her quilted purple dressing-gown, was cutting up a large fudge-iced chocolate-cake when they reached the kitchen. The twins were hassling her, each claiming the other's slice was larger.

"If you two keep on, I'll give both your pieces to Ginny, and you'll go to bed without any!" Mrs Weasley threatened.

"You _so_ love Ginny more."

"I think that kind of blatant favouritism is _disgusting_—

"—especially in a mother of _seven—_"

"Just because we have no womb—"

"Just because we weren't born _girls_—"

"—do we not _bleed_?"

"Fred, that's disgusting," Maia grimaced, as Ginny licked her slice of chocolate-cake so George, who had been eyeing it, grimaced.

"Have you seen this?" Ailith asked Chummy, who licked her fingers before accepting Maia's poster to look at.

"Did you finish them, dear?" Mrs Weasley asked, her face lighting up proudly.

"They're ready to go to the printer's tomorrow," Maia smiled sadly. She didn't know how she felt about finishing her fairytale project.

"No _Nutcracker_?" Chummy asked, glancing up from the poster. "That was always my favourite fairytale ballet."

"Perhaps I'll publish it especially for Christmas," Maia smiled.

"Have you got an order-form?" Chummy asked, counting on her fingers.

"Um… I designed one to go at the bottom of the poster," Maia said uncertainly. "I'm taking it to the _Witch Weekly_ office, to be put into the advertisements section. I've priced all the books to write off the advertising and cost of the first run of printing…"

"You could charge _Galleons_ for these," Chummy said thoughtfully, gazing at the illustrations. "My nieces will _love_ these."

"Show Mum; she'll probably put an order in for all her future grandchildren," Fred said smoothly, rolling his eyes at his mother, who was admiring the illustrations, especially Opal's likeness in Goldilocks.

"There's a thought," George grimaced, eyeing Bill, who was sharing a glass of wine with Chummy. George glanced at Maia, whispering, "D'you reckon Mum'd notice if we tried to neuter Bill right now?"

"Excuse me?" Bill frowned, as Fred stood behind him, examining Bill's ponytail closely.

"Just a precautionary measure," Fred said lightly. "In case you had any _woefully_ _misguided_ ideas of procreating with Phlegm."

"Think of the children," George said solemnly.

"What I think he meant was, 'Think of what they'd do to any children you might have with Phlegm'," Maia interpreted.

"You're pretty sharp with the twins-translations," Chummy smiled.

"Don't encourage them," Bill sighed, tensing as if anticipating the worst. "Fred. What are you doing to my hair?"

Frowning seriously, Fred murmured, "Measuring it. George, I think it's shorter." From his pocket, George whipped out a tape-measure.

"Seventeen…and one-quarter inches."

"It was eighteen inches two nights ago!" Fred gasped, eyes widening.

"I trimmed it."

"_You_—"

"He _trimmed_ it!"

"Date with Phlegm last night?" George asked coolly, coiling his measuring-tape around his fingers.

"Performance-review at Gringott's," Bill said drily.

"In the broom-cupboard?" Fred asked, raising his eyebrows. "You know, when you get rid of Phlegm you'll realise what a fool you'd been making of yourself while you were with her—"

"And then you can start thinking with your _upstairs_-brain when you choose the mother of my nieces and nephews," George said, gesturing violently at Chummy as he stood behind her; when she turned, he stroked Hermione's hair lovingly, making her jump; everyone laughed.

"You two leave Bill alone; it's his choice who he goes out with," Mrs Weasley said, pausing, looking like she was biting her tongue to keep from saying something; in Maia's ear, George whispered, "Five; four; three; two; one," and Mrs Weasley added, "No matter what a nasty _tart_ she is." George smirked.

"Mum, you don't really know her… She was nervous…"

"Nervous about eating substandard steak," Fred scolded mildly.

"She insulted Maia's cooking," George said, arms around Maia's shoulders. "For that alone, she must die." Bill sighed heavily as everyone else laughed; glancing at a smiling Chummy, Bill said, "Fancy finishing this drink anywhere but here?"

"Mm, I think so," Chummy smiled, gathering her things.

"Yes! Good boy!"

"Get in there, mate!"

"Your kids will be _gorgeous_!"

Pausing at the foot of the stairs, Bill flicked his wand at the twins, saying, "_Langlock_!" The twins suddenly retched, unable to speak a word. After everyone had had a good long laugh, Sirius pointed his wand at the twins, and George gasped; Fred made his freed tongue twist, testing his speech.

"Well, that was rude!"

"I thought we gave some well-meaning advice!"

"Apparently he's not only blinded by a pretty face, he's _deafened_ by it too."

"The heart wants what it wants, I suppose," Mrs Weasley sighed sadly.

"Mum, I don't think Bill's _heart_ has _anything_ to do with him going out with Phlegm," George smirked, and while the kitchen rang with laughter, and though her lips twitched, Mrs Weasley clipped him round the ear.

"What are we going to do with her?" she sighed.

"Phlegm?"

"She'd make a gorgeous tapestry," Maia said thoughtfully.

"_Maia_," Hermione smiled remonstratively.

"And just think; any time she got dirty, you could take her outside and _smack_ her one," Maia smirked, and the others laughed. Finishing their cake, everyone went their separate ways; Maia went upstairs to the workshop with the twins.

"You've been busy," Maia said quietly, her heart sinking as she examined the neat rows of cobalt and clear glass bottles and pots on the central work-table. Folded bits of scrap parchment bore the names for each of the bottles' contents, while a clear divide separated the girls' First Aid products from the boys'.

"Told you; we've not slept," George said, closing the door behind him. "We've had all day and all last night."

"I haven't done any work today," she mumbled softly, downhearted. They were supposed to be partners for this project, and she had spent the entire day in her room, not even thinking that she'd left them to do all the work.

"You finished your fairytales," George frowned at her, searching her face. "Something you've always wanted to do. Be really proud of that. And you've been working on your makeup."

"Anyway, we know how you are when people take over your jobs, so we left you the potions you said you'd do," Fred said. "We just set out the bottles because we were toying how to photograph them."

"And, I'd never have tinkered with your hair-dye sticks if you hadn't taken a break," George added. "We actually ended up getting a load of work done after you scolded us. So we all benefited."

But the fact that Maia had just turned her back and ignored the work she'd promised she would do weighed on her; she had disappointed the twins, set them behind in their schedule to get the First Aid kits released to the general public. She'd yelled at them.

"Really, Maia, it's alright," George said gently.

"Yeah," Fred added, looking contrite—an extremely odd expression on Fred's face and thus, even more endearing. "We need someone to remind us what we take for granted every once in a while." Their forgiveness meant surprisingly a lot to her; with that out of the way, the air cleared, Maia set to work. Until midnight, Maia worked on several potions for the First Aid kits; perfected the hair-dye sticks and mixed a large batch of her invented _Lip Tar_ base, separating it out into nine different hues she had already mixed up to corroborate with her eight _Pucker Up_ lip-crayons: iridescent caramel-nude, gold shimmer 'Skinny-Dip'; matte cherry-red 'All Tied Up'; perky poppy-pink, moisturising 'Topless'; iridescent-shimmer dusky rose-mauve 'So Frisk Me!'; high-gloss red-red 'Thigh High'; pretty coral-pink, luminous 'After Sex'; velvety, shimmering vibrant fuchsia 'Acting Out'; amethyst 'Misbehave' with subtle pearl-silver shimmer; and the _Lip Tar_ for her special fairytale kit, 'First Waltz', an iridescent pale-pink.

She also worked on the four special-effect _Lip Glass_ hues she had created, the gloss drying to velvety-smoothness with a high-gloss shine like glass: 'Yes Darling', a high-gloss firetruck-red, plumping and scented with caramel-apples; 'A Girl's Best Friend', clear gloss with vivid diamond sparkle; 'Nice Knickers', a translucent, glittery-pink that glowed in the dark; and 'Careful!' a colour-change gloss with a small diagram showing the different hues as matched to which emotions.

She put on a vat of clear, buffing nail-lacquer that healed torn, damaged nails, which she had developed from different recipes, and called '_I Broke a Nail…!_', and the hangover-cure she and the twins had experimented with including a concentration of a safe, infallible contraceptive-potion, tweaking the hangover-cure to a higher concentration so smaller doses could be taken.

Using magic, the twins had extended the built-in cupboards to walk-in storage-rooms, where they kept everything organised neatly; one room was to be devoted entirely to Maia's stock; a small section was devoted to the First Aid kits. Once potions were completed and bottled or potted, surplus product was stored in large, sealed apothecary jars with little silver spigots for easy bottling purposes. So once Maia had bottled the contraceptive hangover-cure, she put the leftovers in a labelled jar in the cupboard, and found the full-size bottles with a brush-lid for the clear healing nail-lacquer. It shimmered subtly iridescent upon bottling, giving off the faint aroma of peonies—voted by the female residents/visitors to Number Twelve as the favourite.

"We thought of a new product," Fred said, when Maia cleaned out several cauldrons with the _Scourgify_ charm, and started using magic to siphon _Lip Tar_ into the squeeze-tubes with tiny nozzles (she was going to advertise them with a tiny brush, in a small, pretty hand-sewn pouch). When each shade was put into tubes, the tubes were put back into their original boxes, which were labelled clearly in large, unmistakeable lettering, and the excess was safely stored in the cupboard.

"What?" she asked curiously, sidling over to Fred as she dusted her hands.

"You know the biggest giveaway of mischief-making is the evidence left on your hands," Fred said, grinning.

"Ink, stink and muck," George nodded. "We'd always thought if Gambol & Jape's sold some kind of soap that could get rid of _any_ kind of mess, we'd have bought out their entire stock."

"Alas, they did not," Fred sighed, "and we have their gross oversight to thank for several _brutal_ thrashings from Mum."

"I'm sure it was whatever you'd done to _need_ the thrashings that caused them," Maia smiled.

"Whatever—the point is, if we could create a soap that removes evidence of _any_ ill-doing, we'd corner the market," Fred said happily.

"We're going to start working on it tomorrow," George grinned.

"We thought we could add a little sample bar to the young First Aid envelopes," Fred nodded.

"Give 'em a taste and they'll come back _begging _for more," George grinned.

"Speaking of tastes—well, tastes and scents—you remember that lip-gloss I was developing, the one to make teeth appear whiter, to put into the First Aid kits?" Maia said, and the twins nodded. "I need your help with getting the scents right."

"What're you scenting it with?" George asked.

"Tuberose, peony, freesia and rose," Maia said; her _favourite_ combination of flowers, if a little violet and jasmine was added. "But I was also thinking of flavouring the gloss."

"You could take inspiration from Amortentia again," Fred said, shrugging.

"Can you charm things to _taste_ of what you find most attractive?" Maia asked curiously.

"Maia, you're a witch—you can create _anything_ your imagination whips up," George grinned.

"And speaking of imagination—how are your daydreams going?" Maia asked, smiling.

"Very well," Fred said, with a rich grin.

"Hey, you're still doing the sample-sizes for that lip-gloss in the First Aid kits, right?" George asked, and Maia glanced up, nodding. She retrieved the sample-size gloss bottle, and the full-sized one; beside it, the miniature one looked incredibly sweet.

"I am. It keeps the cost down," she said.

"Actually, we were thinking that," George nodded.

"Keep the costs equivalent, so some brat doesn't complain his sister had more money spent on her," Fred said.

"No tantrums in our shop, _thankyouverymuch_!" George declared, making Maia laugh.

"Will _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ establishments have a code of conduct their customers must follow?" she teased.

"Absolutely!" George grinned.

"Screamers put in the stocks—"

"—Naked Tuesdays—" George winked cheekily at Maia, who blushed, grinning.

"—and we'll reserve one of our very _best_ products to punish shoplifters with," Fred said, with a satisfied grin as George nodded.

"We'll need to borrow your typewriter to type the Code up, actually," George said thoughtfully. Maia chuckled.

"Are you going to start anything tonight?" Fred asked.

"Actually, as it's late, I'm just going to draw for a little bit," Maia sighed, kneading her eyes.

"Anything new?" Fred asked.

"No… No, not really. Hermione made a good point… A hair-product that could tame even her mane," she said, fiddling with her journal.

"Before you start painting, have a go at this," Fred said, handing Maia an ordinary-looking silver whistle. Maia eyed it dubiously, but took it, dutifully giving it a short blast: It came out as a rich wolf-whistle.

"I'm gonna have _so_ much fun with Madam Hooch this year," Fred sighed lustily.

"Wonder who'll get Gryffindor captaincy," George said thoughtfully.

"Harry," they both said together. Maia rolled her eyes as the twins chatted about Quidditch, and turned to her journal in the parlour.

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: How does this aftermath of the Dementor-attack compare to canon? I think Maia is definitely the kind of girl who would feel really guilty for promising to do something and not actually doing it, especially if someone was relying on her.


	28. Chapter 28

**A.N.**: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed! This chapter is for Marli, Beatrix and _MuggleCreator_! Because you're hard-core _Pleiades_ lovers and you make writing this fanfic worthwhile!

So, this is the aftermath of the Dementors' attack in _my_ version of events!

We've also got a glimpse of moustached George…in tartan… That's just for you, B!

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_28_

* * *

><p>As Maia dropped into the kitchen accompanied by the twins next morning, several people laughed; Ginny giggled; several people shushed each other, and Sirius smirked, flipping open the <em>Daily Prophet<em>.

"You made the front page," he said simply. Maia's face, alongside Harry's, smiled back at her.

"In full colour," Ailith remarked, with a satisfied smile as she eyed the newspaper. Coloured photographs _were_ unusual for the _Prophet_. Above the full-colour photographs of Harry and Maia, the headline read '_DEMENTOR ATTACK_'.

"Oh _no_," Maia groaned, as the twins laughed richly.

So Cuffe agreed to print, then," George grinned.

"We had words," Ailith smiled gently. Sirius reached out to rub her thigh familiarly, giving it a pat before turning back to the paper.

"Read the article aloud, Sirius," Remus said, frowning slightly.

"'_At twenty minutes past nine last evening, the Improper Use of Magic Office received an alert that two Patronuses had been conjured in the Muggle suburb of Little Whinging, Surrey, long-time residence of our nation's beloved hero, Harry Potter_.

'_More staggering than the power with which the Patronuses were conjured is the reason for which they were deemed necessary. Reports of two Dementors in Little Whinging, attacking Mr Harry Potter, 14, and Miss Maia Black, 15, had Madam Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law-Enforcement, leaving her office late last night to investigate the claim_.

'_Prior reports from the _Prophet's_ ex-journalist, Rita Skeeter, painted young Mr Potter as an arrogant attention-seeker: Sitting in on his testimony with Madam Bones, this reporter is delighted to report that, far from being thrilled to find himself famous and jumping at any chance to further his own reputation, young Harry Potter is quite the opposite. Polite, well-spoken, with a good head on his shoulders, Mr Potter gives his testimony on what happened last evening, walking home…_'" Sirius read out Harry's statement: Ailith praised Harry for his instincts; reported that Harry had told her that Remus had taught him the Patronus Charm in his third year, when Dementors were stationed around Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—"'_when asked why the Dementors affected him so badly during that third-year Quidditch match, Mr Potter reluctantly confides that _"I…I hear my mum being killed by Voldemort when Dementors get too near me".

'_Professor Remus Lupin, now at the forefront of the werewolf-rights movement, taught Mr Potter the Patronus Charm as a precautionary measure during his year-long tenure as, quoting Professor Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, _"one of the most beloved professors of Defence Against the Dark Arts Hogwarts has seen these many years".

'_When asked, Miss Black, an incredibly pretty girl with a demeanour thrumming with vibrancy and intelligence, said she learned the Patronus Charm after a brush with a Boggart, which had taken the form of a Dementor. Like Mr Potter, the Dementors have a greater effect than usual on Miss Black, who will turn sixteen later this summer. Miss Maia Black is the daughter of Balian de Lusignan, hero to many during the Great Wizarding War, and also granddaughter to Godfrey de Lusignan, the most-beloved Minister for Magic in British history, whose grisly murder during the War brought about Millicent Bagshot's brief tenure as Minister_.

'"It was lucky Harry tried the Patronus Charm first; even though it didn't work the first time, it staved off a little of the Dementors' influence; it cleared my mind, so I could focus on producing a Patronus myself," _Miss Black says, crumpling a chocolate-wrapper nervously. Many adult wizards struggle with the post-N.E.W.T.-level charm, which requires presence of mind and the ability to focus on a single, blissfully happy memory. Amazing, then, that two teenagers with such tragic histories can surpass even highly-trained Ministry employees in magical Defence skill-levels._

'_If readers are shocked by two teenagers' ability to produce fully corporeal Patronuses, I pose the question: Why were they necessary at all?_

'_A team of wizards from the Auror Department confirmed that Dementors were indeed present in the little alley in Little Whinging; convincing evidence given by Mr Dudley Dursley, Muggle cousin to Harry Potter, also backs up the claim of an attack. But nobody seems able to answer the question; what were Dementors _doing there_ in the first place?_

'_In a Ministry that is rapidly devolving into the pursuit of personal agendas of racist bureaucrats pushing for the tagging of mermaids, culling of vampires, herding up of centaurs and euthanasia of those afflicted by the werewolf-bite, whispers from insiders that the order for the two Dementors to leave Azkaban came from _inside_ Fudge's own office are being taken very seriously._

'_And if the Minister sees fit to keep under his employ such persons as potential assassins of our greatest hero, be it on his own career! However, this journalist asks readers to consider this; do your sons and daughters know the Patronus Charm? How would they fare, if, the next time Dementors go rogue, they come for your own children?_

'_The removal of Dementors from Azkaban has long been a bone of contention between the Wizengamot and Prof. Albus Dumbledore, who sits as Chief Warlock; not since Godfrey de Lusignan's legendary tenure as Minister for Magic has the subject been broached to remove the Dementors from our prison. _

'_Said Madam Bones in an official statement last evening, _"Long has it been thought the Dementors' time at Azkaban is over. I voted to remove them when Godfrey de Lusignan was Minister; and I heartily agree with Professor Dumbledore that the time has come again to reconsider the matter of removing Dementors from Azkaban. A full-scale inquiry into why Dementors attacked Miss Black and Mr Potter has begun, headed by myself personally, and I can only apologise to the two for the terror they experienced, and applaud their bravery and intuition not only in defending themselves against the Dementors, but also in going out of their way to protect Mr Potter's defenceless Muggle cousin".

'_Professor Dumbledore, whom I managed to catch briefly at the Ministry last evening, coming out of the Department of Magical Law-Enforcement to sort out Miss Black's and Mr Potter's legal standings after their illegal use of the Patronus Charm, said only, _"Considering their bravery and selflessness in protecting Harry's Muggle cousin, I am very proud to call myself their headmaster. Maia and Harry behaved admirably in the face of danger, exhibiting the behaviour I and the rest of the staff at Hogwarts School can only hope to inspire in our students".

'_An insider close to both Harry Potter and Maia Black, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that both Mr Potter and Miss Black_ "acted like their parents' children; they would be incredibly proud!"

'_While Madam Bones launches an inquiry into the Dementor attack, we must all be grateful to Professor R. J. Lupin for teaching Mr Potter the Patronus Charm; while Miss Black and Mr Potter await news of any punishment for their reasonable breach of the Statute of Secrecy in the face of a life-threatening emergency, we can only hope whoever is responsible for the assassination-attempt on one of our history's greatest heroes and two innocent bystanders comes clean_.

'_Hopefully they will find themselves in a nice cell in a Dementor-free Azkaban by the New Year_.'"

"I like that," Maia grinned. "'Assassination attempt'."

"You'll have the nation up in arms about the Ministry," Sirius said, grinning lazily at Ailith, looking highly satisfied.

"We all do what we can," Ailith smiled. "Hopefully it will have the desired effect. Cuffe's assured me coverage on this the whole way through the inquiry. Hopefully I'll have more opportunity to uncover Ministry corruption."

"Watergate," Maia said, and Ailith winked.

"I hope Harry doesn't mind us using him as the poster-boy for resistance against the corrupt institution," Sirius said nonchalantly.

"Nah, that's right up Harry's street," George grinned.

"He breaks more rules at Hogwarts than we've ever gotten away with," Fred sighed, looking mildly disgruntled.

"That's because Harry's being _noble_ and _heroic_ while he's breaking them," George intoned sagely. "Nicking magic gems; freeing vain hippogriffs; aiding fugitives with an unnatural fixation on rats; entering underage into a deadly tournament; saving our sister from psychotic diaries…"

"Make light of my possession, thank you," Ginny scowled.

"You're welcome," the twins replied blithely. Ailith glanced up, eyes wide and curious.

"Possession?"

"In our second year," Hermione spoke up, Crookshanks purring in her lap, "Ginny's first, the Chamber of Secrets opened at Hogwarts." Ginny looked rather uncomfortable. "The _Prophet_ never reported on it, but Hagrid was arrested by Fudge for it, without any evidence; Hagrid spent months in Azkaban. When, all the time, it was really You-Know-Who…" Ron came into his own, taking over the story for Hermione, who had spent most of her second-year in the hospital-wing, Petrified or covered in fur. Ailith was fascinated about the Ministry cover-up; the arrest without evidence of Hagrid the gamekeeper; the confirmation that Acromantula had a colony inside the Forbidden Forest; how Hermione had brewed Polyjuice Potion in the first term of her second-year; figuring out Moaning Myrtle had been the basilisk's only fatality during the first opening of the Chamber; Dobby's interference and revelations; how Harry suspected Lucius Malfoy had slipped the diary amongst Ginny's books after a fistfight with Arthur in _Flourish & Blotts_. She was especially curious about the diary, as was Mad-Eye, who stumped in, relieved by Hestia from duty in Little Whinging. He grilled Ginny about the diary, how it worked; what she'd felt; until Mrs Weasley came downstairs, ready to relieve Kingsley on guard-duty, and scolded Mad-Eye for dredging up Ginny's worst memories.

Fred and George eyed Mad-Eye lovingly as he took the brunt of Mrs Weasley's anger for rattling Ginny's cage, "a nice change," George sighed, though Mrs Weasley clipped him round the ear for mentioning the diary in the first place.

"It's good information, Molly," Ailith said, frowning thoughtfully. "I wonder…"

"What?" Mrs Weasley frowned.

"Well, if I could get this into the _Prophet_, and spin it that Fudge arrested Hagrid but let Malfoy go free after Harry accused him of planting the diary… We could even get Dobby to testify in front of the Wizengamot…"

"Dobby'd probably have _loads_ of stuff on the Malfoys," Ron said eagerly, with a huge swallow; he was working on his second plate of breakfast. "Mind you, you'd have a hell of a job trying to get it out of him without him trying to punish himself every five minutes."

"He just needs a little practice," Hermione said. "He'll stop trying to punish himself when he remembers he's not enslaved to the Malfoys anymore."

"Enslaved to the Malfoys," Fred said, with an ugly look. "Can't think of anything worse."

George frowned thoughtfully. "Actually, I can—"

"Stockings," he and Fred said at the same time, with an identical nod.

"In other words, a fate worse than death," George sighed, and the girls laugh.

"Oh! And if the Ministry tries to charge Harry with anything, you should definitely get a statement from Dobby on the sugared-violet pudding he levitated in Privet Drive three years ago," Maia said, glancing at Ailith. "Harry told me about it; the Ministry gave _Harry_ a warning for it."

"I'll definitely do that," Ailith nodded, hastily scribbling in a notebook. "Actually, I'd better be off. Barnabas wants something for the _Evening_ _Prophet_. Maia, let me know if you get any _letters_…" _from Daily Prophet readers_, went unsaid, but Maia knew what she meant; she wanted to hear the public's reaction to the article and Sirius' broadcast.

They only had the _Prophet_ already because Ailith had brought over a copy fresh from the press; as the usual time for post-deliveries arrived, owls started fluttering down to the basement-kitchen window, a considerable horde of them. Most days, Sirius received a lot of post from _Radio Rock_ listeners, but today, the considerable number of owls increased by half; letters addressed to 'Niecey', her usual requests for recipe-cards, found her, but today, letters addressed in variations of her name—_Miss Maia Black_; _Miss Black_; _Miss M Black_; _Maia B_; _M._ _Black_; _Maia Black_—found her.

"Someone's popular this morning," Mrs Weasley said, handing Maia another three letters relieved from unfamiliar owls. "Perhaps you should set up a post-box at the post-office in Diagon Alley to stop all these owls dropping into the square, it's getting ridiculous."

"Oh, don't worry; none of the Muggles around here have noticed," Sirius said, waving a hand idly, as he smirked at one of his own letters. "A request for more ABBA and Mozart's 'Horn Concerto #3 Finale'. Do you have that, Maia?"

"Upstairs," Maia nodded.

"Maia, if you want to get to the _Witch Weekly _office before Professor McGonagall gets here," Mrs Weasley called, over the general clamour of breakfast-time and the arrival of the post-owls, "you'd better go now."

"Be careful," Sirius said sternly, glancing up.

"Don't worry, Sirius," George smiled sincerely. "We'll look after Mai."

"Yeah, she's got armed-escorts from now on," Fred added.

"You just want to see that tasty chef at _Witch Weekly_ who leans over the puddings in low-cut robes," Ginny said, rolling her eyes.

"Maybe not," Fred said.

"We might sign up for consideration in the _Witch Weekly_ Most Charming Smile competition," George said, and at the same instant, both twins pulled the goofiest grimaces they could come up with, making everyone laugh. Ailith had given Maia the names of several contacts at _Witch Weekly_, including her friend in the Advertisements office; Apparating to Diagon Alley, Maia didn't notice the kerfuffle until they stepped into the open-plan office in _Witch Weekly_ headquarters. Several reporters came up to her, asking questions; they all recognised her instantly from her photograph in the _Prophet_, wanting their own inside scoop. "Actually, I was hoping to be pointed to Belladonna Draper's office in Advertising."

"What are you advertising, Maia?" one witch asked eagerly.

"Show 'em," George said in an undertone, giving her a slight nudge, giving her an encouraging wink. Flushing, with all eyes on her, Maia pulled out a copy she had made of her poster; the beanstalk foliage now contained a lilac sunburst cut-out, bearing the words, in gold-edged rose-coloured ink, '_Look Out for Corresponding Limited-Edition Cosmetics from _Pleiades Inc._ Coming Soon!_' It took fifteen minutes, twelve advance orders and the poster being circulated around the open-plan offices before Maia was directed to Belladonna Draper, head of advertising in _Witch Weekly_, to hand over the poster, with its attached baby-blue order-form.

"Cosmetics," Ms Draper said, glancing up from the poster as she handed Maia a letter to confirm they'd received the advertisement.

"I've been experimenting with inventing my own cosmetics," Maia said confidently. "If I was to produce them for the market, I've been creating packaging that would be aimed toward teenagers and young-professionals. "The colours I used in the fairytale illustrations inspired a special set of lip-products and nail-lacquers."

"Oh, that's marvellous!" Ms Draper grinned. "You know, you should really talk to the features journalists, it'd be worth your while to have an article on your company in _Witch Weekly_, especially with your target-clientele."

"Ailith said when I've got all my prototypes made up, we could photograph them and she'd talk to one of your colleagues about doing a feature," Maia said, smiling. Seizing on an idea, she wondered aloud, "Would it be worth my while bringing a basketful of free samples for everyone to test out?"

"To this office?" Ms Draper laughed, grinning. "Absolutely. If you've got a gorgeous red lipstick, drop it straight at my desk!"

"I will," she beamed. Ms Draper chuckled, assuring Maia that her advertisement would first appear in next week's issue.

Maia knew putting her things in _Witch Weekly_ would be a very smart move to promote her fairytales. The response she had already had for her recipe-cards over _Radio Rock_ was staggering, and as they left the Witch Weekly office, Maia chatted with George about his proposal that he photograph her cooking for a full cookbook.

She and the twins—who had been chatting with one of the features journalists about several of their products—slipped out of the busy, atmospheric office to head off to the printer's. Having organised all of the specifics for her fairytales beforehand, Maia dropped off the copies of her manuscripts to the publisher; she watched them go into production, fascinated, wishing she could stay and watch.

Illustrated with her favourite watercolours from each fairytale, the dust-jackets of thick paper covered hardback covers bound in cotton dyed to match the same hue as the ribbon she had used to keep each fairytale neat, the primary colour she had chosen to build the watercolour themes from; the front cover was embossed with a tiny specific symbol relating to each fairytale, the title and her name featured on the spine, and on the lower-back of the book, the _Pleiades Inc._ symbol was embossed, in either gold, copper or silver; each of the pages were printed on very high-quality, satin-finish paper.

"And…we have your order," the printer, with whom Maia was getting to be on very good terms with, smiled at the twins, leading them to the dispatch-depot in the back of the mill. The printer found the twins' order of the remaining commissions Maia had done for their love-potions and several other product packaging. With a promise to return with another order very soon, Maia wondered if the three of them were the publisher's favourite customers, because of the money they'd spent there; they still had to design and print the labels and packaging for the First Aid kits.

But that had to wait; she was due for an exam with Professor McGonagall this morning, and then they all had another class at Madam Primpernelle's.

* * *

><p>Halfway through her exam with Professor McGonagall, the study door burst open. Maia jumped, then laughed. George stood in the doorway, wearing a strip of tartan around his hips, and nothing else besides an incredibly handsome auburn granddad moustache, the kind of which Tsar Nicholas, Kaiser Wilhelm and King George would have been proud!<p>

"Professor—!"

"I'm in the middle of an examination, Mr Weasley," Professor McGonagall admonished severely.

"Well, never mind that!" George waved a hand impatiently. "Do you know how to tie a kilt?"

"No I do _not_ know how to put on a kilt!" Professor McGonagall blanched indignantly.

"What, not even when you were a bonny wee lass?" George asked, surprised.

"Mr Weasley, please remove yourself from this classroom before I _help you_," Professor McGonagall threatened.

"Oh, alright, fine. I was just looking for a little Gaelic culture, that's all. Far be it from me to interrupt the secret workings of a pre-O.W.L. Transfiguration examination," George sighed, much affronted.

"Careful, George," Maia grinned, eyeing the length of tartan around his hips. "You're one snagged thread away from wearing a ribbon and a birthday-tag." They both shot Professor McGonagall a mischievous grin, who pursed her lips. George grinned at Maia.

"When _is_ your birthday?" he asked.

"Soon," Maia smirked.

"I'll save it, then."

Maia winked. "By the way, _glorious_ moustache!" George clapped a hand to his face, feeling his moustache.

"I'd wondered why my nose felt ticklish," he said thoughtfully.

"I know I always regret asking," Professor McGonagall said, with a long-suffering sigh. "But what _are_ you doing, Mr Weasley?"

"Well, see, we were searching for Mowgli in the Indian jungle, in our Colonial finest," George explained, indicating the moustache, "then the Doctor arrived in his TARDIS to take us to Woodstock, when we kind of got lost in fourteenth-century Scotland. We're going to war against Edward the Longshanks."

"I'd lose the moustache," Maia remarked. "It's not historically accurate."

"No. Luckily we've sorted out that we're Amy Pond's Scottish twin-brothers, otherwise she would've let the Scots string us up by our entrails—especially since Phineas Nigellus keeps trying to teach Opal the Entrail-Expelling Curse. Hey!" While he had been talking, Maia had reached into her bag for her camera, and snapped a photograph of George in his finest.

"I couldn't resist," she smiled. "That's going in the Christmas cards!"

"George!" came a shout from Fred, out of sight.

"What?"

"Hurry up! We're leaving! Gandalf's going to show us a thing or two about fireworks!" Fred shouted. Gazing from Professor McGonagall to Maia, George flashed a grin so suddenly Professor McGonagall jumped. He swept them a bow, saying, "Carry on," as he closed the door after him.

"Oh, that should be interesting," Professor McGonagall sighed, glancing at the door as if expecting the worst.

"Very," Maia said, smiling. "They've just finished another batch of Wildfire Whiz-Bangs… You probably don't want to know…"

"One more year," Professor McGonagall sighed. "Come on, back to your exam."

Whilst Professor McGonagall marked the written portion of Maia's exam, Maia read in her textbook; there had been no sounds of fireworks exploding; in fact, it seemed…unnaturally quiet. Professor McGonagall handed Maia her written exam back with a rare smile; an Outstanding. She had commented all the way through Maia's incredibly long, intricate essay, why she had received the O, and they spent a few minutes talking about the practical portion of the exam. Then, as the carriage-clock on the mantelpiece ticked nearly noon, Professor McGonagall made her way out of Number Twelve, and Maia made her way to the kitchen for lunch.

Opal was giggling with Sirius; Hermione had Crookshanks in her lap, her nose in a book on elf-magic; Ron was shovelling sandwiches; and both Cedric and Neville being out, visiting family, Mrs Weasley off for a cup of tea with her Auntie Muriel, the kitchen was relatively quiet. Except for the giggles; and the sound of Opal laughing was exquisite. Conspicuous by their absence were the twins, though that didn't last very long.

Fred, ashen-faced, cheeks hollow, appeared at the foot of the stairs, scanning faces. Sirius, strangely perceptive to people's moods, snapped his head up, frowning. "Fred, what's wrong?"

"I…have to take Georgie to St Mungo's," he said, his voice so quiet and shaky, he sounded like a stranger.

"What's happened?" Sirius asked urgently, displacing Opal from his lap to stride around the table over to Fred. Fred didn't seem able to speak, too upset. Eyes wide, he blinked them several times, focusing on Sirius' face.

"I messed up the concentration," he mumbled.

"On what?" Sirius asked. Maia's breath caught, flinging herself from the table, upsetting her chair in her haste to throw herself up the stairs. He got the concentration wrong?! On what? One wrong dosage on some of their products, George could… He was sitting on the stairs, incredibly pale, trembling, tears coursing silently down pale cheeks, wearing an odd set of gloves on his shaking hands.

Not gloves. As Maia approached, breath escaped her in a horrified gasp, sinking onto the stair beside George. Something had burned away the skin and flesh, almost to the bone, up to his wrists. "_Georgie_!" George ducked his head, fresh tears coursing silently down his sodden cheeks. Trying not to look at George's mutilated hands, Maia hugged her arm around his broad shoulders, gently wiping the tears from his cheeks, placing a gentle kiss on his cheek to calm him.

"Let me see," Sirius said solemnly, frowning as he squatted in front of George; he hissed in a breath at the sight of George's hands.

"It was the _soap_," Fred said shakily, his voice cracking, glancing at Maia.

"What did you put in it, acid?" Maia asked, as George bit back a cry of pain as Sirius carefully turned his hands over.

"Get him straight to St Mungo's," Sirius said, glancing at Fred. "You know where it is?" Fred nodded.

"Went there…loads when we were l-little," George sniffed hoarsely.

"Make sure they give him dittany," Sirius said, "and plenty of it." Maia helped George to his feet; Fred supported him out the door, and they both Disapparated.

"Will he be alright?" Maia asked uncertainly, glancing at Sirius.

"Oh, the Healers at St Mungo's deal with that kind of stuff all the time," Sirius said, locking the door behind the twins. "He'll be back out within the hour. They only keep you overnight for the really serious stuff."

Maia frowned thoughtfully. "Do witches go to St Mungo's to give birth?"

"No! Well, I suppose some do, it it's an exceptional case," Sirius said thoughtfully. "But St Mungo's does train the nation's midwives. God, I used to love St Mungo's midwives. Their fitted little uniform-dresses, and frisky little caps! The cape they'd wear when flying…" Sirius shivered, flashing a grin.

"You'd like _Call the Midwife_," Maia said. "A book made into a television-programme about midwives in the East End in the 1950s. It's got Miranda in it!"

"Oh, Miranda!" Sirius chuckled. Everyone in the house loved watching _Miranda_.

"I'll lend you the book," Maia said, sighing, as she glanced back at the door.

"Don't you have plans this afternoon?" Sirius asked.

"Another course at Madam Primpernelle's," Maia nodded, biting her lip. "It's the last one, and it's a late one; we don't finish until seven."

"I'll have your beds turned down before you're due back," Sirius smirked.

Hours later, she said goodbye to Sirius while he was in a break from broadcasting, and promised she wouldn't get into trouble on her way to Diagon Alley. "They listen to Radio Rock at Madam Primpernelle's… Will you play these for me?"

She handed Sirius a scrap of parchment with a list of songs and musicians on it. "Course I will. I'd do anything for you, poppet, you know that."

Maia smiled softly, reaching down to hug Sirius where he sat, sprawled languorously, clicking on records with his toe, sipping a beer. "I love you," she said softly. Sirius squeezed her, keeping her in a comfortable hug, stroking her hair down her back.

"I love you too, poppet," he smiled warmly, releasing her.

"I've, um…got more things for you," Maia smiled; it was the first time she'd told Sirius how much he meant to her. Three tiny words were so powerful.

"Presents?" Sirius asked eagerly, his face lighting up around his sunglasses.

"Of sorts," Maia smiled, producing a list of suggestions for new features to include in his broadcasts. "I thought of the first one when Ginny was wailing over her Potions homework."

"Good shout," Sirius smiled, nodding approvingly. "Oh, I like this one. With a badge and a flag to whoever we pick?"

"That sounds good. When are we going to announce the competition-winner?" Maia asked.

"I thought on Friday," Sirius said. "After my Very Foolish Thing and the Top Ten countdown."

"I'll finish the wireless tonight for the first-place winner," Maia said. "Your record's nearly finished."

"Oh!" Sirius' chair nearly toppled backwards; he righted it with a yelp, almost sloshing his Butterbeer everywhere, and was laughing when he clicked his microphone on.

"_And we're back; that was _'_Love You More' by _The Pierces, _a gorgeous Muggle duo_," Sirius said, and he smiled when Maia waved, excusing herself. Kreacher locked the front-door after her, making sure she had her little bag, her diamond-weave basket for completed products, and several snacks for her and the twins to enjoy during their "beauty school", as Ginny called it.

She stopped by the _Daily Prophet_ office, slinking over to Ailith's desk to avoid questions from her colleagues, and smiled as she perched on Ailith's desk, which was stacked with files of notes, heavy tomes stuffed with sticky-notes and scrolls; her wall-divider was a collage of photographs, a calendar, magazine cuttings, articles, letters and memos. A line of cameras was arranged along the back of the desk.

"This is a surprise," Ailith smiled; somewhere, a wireless was playing _Aerosmith_. _Radio Rock_ had infiltrated the _Prophet_.

"I haven't missed the evening-edition?" Maia asked.

"We go to print in two hours," Ailith said, checking her watch.

"Good," Maia smiled, producing a packet of letters. "I made copies of the really good ones. They're in extremes; either they believe me and want a full inquest into Fudge's administration, or I'm a hateful fear-monger. Someone asked whether Harry and I were going out."

Ailith laughed gently. "Don't worry, I won't deny you're going out, that'll just encourage people. Anyway, this seems to be on a par with my research, anyway." She indicated the letters. "I had a note from Belladonna Draper earlier." Ailith beamed. "You submitted your advertisement."

"I made a final edit to the poster and gave it to Witch Weekly," Maia nodded.

"She said she'd wait 'til you approached her with your cosmetics and pocket-wirelesses, then she'd get Thomasina in features to do an article on Pleiades Inc.," Ailith beamed. "Maia, that's wonderful!"

"Well, it's thanks to you," Maia said shyly. Over her shoulder, Ailith called gently, "Olly, turn it up!" Sirius' voice sounded from the wireless: "…_Niecey's come up with some ideas to keep you all entertained—and educated! Thanks to Gin throwing a tantrum over a Potions essay, _Radio Rock_ is henceforth going to initiate 'Homework Helper'. All of you at Hogwarts, and you poor sods being home-schooled by your parents, send in your queries over homework assignments, and we'll try our best to help on-air, with expertise from professors, Aurors, Unspeakables, future prefects and myself, of course. It's about time I put my ten Outstanding N.E.W.T.s to good use!_" Sirius laughed at himself.

"_So, send in your questions, and we'll help make the affliction of summer-assignments a little less painful._" Ailith smiled at her. "_Also, we're going to do 'Desert Island Records', a feature, every day; we want you to write in and tell us your top five songs or pieces of music you couldn't live without, and why, and I'll play them. The records can be Muggle, Wizard or a combination. The only stipulation is that they have to be _good_. Whoever I pick will have their songs played, and they'll receive a _Radio Rock_ badge and brand-spanking-new flag to decorate their room with. Which brings me to a final notice before I treat you to a little _Fleetwood Mac_: on Friday, we'll be announcing the winner of our t-shirt competition. The top-two runners-up will receive the full _Radio Rock _merchandise kit, while the grand winner will receive a limited-edition customised _Radio Rock_ patented pocket-wireless from _Pleiades Inc. _Keep an eye out for the pocket-wirelesses in the future, or bombard us with letters requesting they be put into mass production rather than commission_."

"I hope you're paying _him_ a commission," Ailith said in an undertone, smiling at Maia.

"My food's worth more than gold," Maia smirked, "and it's thanks to that and some Rejuvenation Drafts that he's so unrecognisable."

An owl winged itself to Ailith's desk, and she'd caught it and opened the letter before the owl had turned gracefully and soared out of the window again. As Ailith grabbed her bag, Maia felt their chat was over. "Amelia," Ailith breathed, glancing at Maia, as she smiled and tucked the cookbook into her bag. "Are you headed home?"

Maia shook her head, following Ailith out past the receptionist. "Madam Primpernelle's."

"Another class? I'm surprised the twins aren't with you," Ailith said.

"I think they might still be at St Mungo's," Maia said anxiously. Ailith glanced around, eyes wide.

"The twins?"

"One of their experiments," Maia said, shrugging slightly. "I'm sure George is fine." Ailith nodded, held the door open, and Maia waved, departing for Madam Primpernelle's as Ailith took several steps in the opposite direction before Disapparating. Relief washed over Maia as she glanced toward Madam Primpernelle's and spotted two tall, well-built redheads sauntering over from Florean Fortescue's, both of them slurping at large, melting ice-creams. And then annoyance prickled.

"Please tell me you've not been strutting around Diagon Alley for the last hour and a half unfettered!" she scowled, striding up to the twins.

"In our defence, we didn't just stick to Diagon Alley. We hit the Crescent, checked out the old amphitheatre, and looked up some of the properties up for rent," Fred said, licking his ice-cream.

"And I don't have my girl-gettin' jeans on, so I wasn't strutting," George added. Maia frowned, annoyed and a little upset; they hadn't even had the decency to drop in at Number Twelve and tell everyone that George was okay. She gave him a glare as he slurped his ice-cream, his hands completely fine.

"Your hands were healed okay, then," she said coolly.

"Oh, yeah! Healed 'em in about a minute!"

"_Gorgeous_ assistant-Healer on the ward!"

"Sold a _tonne _of stuff to kids in the paediatric ward—"

"Poor kids; hospital's grim enough without the Healers _trying_ to make it like a prison," Fred sighed, and George nodded.

"We recommended they look you up to redecorate," he smiled.

"Course, after the first Wildfire Whiz-Bang went off, we were none too politely _recommended_ to leave—"

"So we came here. Needed to pick some things up at the apothecary—"

"Couple books on Healing from _Flourish & Blotts_ my new friend recommended are worth investing in—" Maia turned on her heel and walked into _Madam Primpernelle's_, too annoyed to listen to their banter.

Only small quarters, late hours and good music helped alleviate Maia's annoyance with the twins—that, and George had resorted to year-five methods when she wouldn't talk to him, passing her a note on a scrap of parchment, gazing imploringly at her with puppy-dog eyes until she'd written a reply.

An entire afternoon and a good part of the evening was spent in Madam Primpernelle's, grinding pigment; mixing potions; learning how to distil the scent of a slice of treacle tart, a jar of honey, a tuberose flower, into a glutinous clear liquid; perfecting charms to turn a liquid into a powder on application; special-effects like shimmer, concealing, healing potions in toners, primers, foundations, creams, makeup-removers. Maia stumbled onto Diagon Alley a little after seven o'clock into brilliant sunshine, dazed and exhausted, bone-tired; she and George leaned on each other as they struggled to put one foot in front of the other, while Fred giggled dazedly. Their baskets loaded with products for them to tweak and fiddle with, they made their way to Number Twelve without pausing at the _Sunflower_, their usual post-lesson haunt. They were starving. And, bless him, Kreacher had dinner on the table ready for when they walked through the door. Though Maia was so tired she could barely lift her fork; Sirius, allowing Kreacher to put on four consecutive records so he could eat with everyone else, chuckled, taking her fork from her, and picked up a spoon, scooping up a mouthful, which he teased her with, making choo-choo noises like a train.

"Come on, poppet, you used to love the train when you were a baby," he cooed playfully. "Or what about Uncle Padfoot's flying motorcycle?" He gave a low rumbling roar, teasing her with the spoon.

When Maia had eaten—refusing Sirius' help—she collapsed in the twins' bedroom for a nap, with orders for Sirius to send Opal in an hour to wake them.

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: What thinks you? I know I'd be pretty pissed off with the boys for just sauntering around Diagon Alley (and _not_ buying me an ice-cream, either!) without making sure people knew George was okay! I think George getting hurt is probably the only time Fred would ever be scared and quiet. Ever.


	29. Chapter 29

**A.N.**: I was typing up this chapter, and I suddenly thought, The Godfather. Why didn't I use _that_ as Sirius' broadcasting alias? Hindsight! George's handwriting is, in my mind, like 'Freestyle Script' font on _Word_.

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_29_

* * *

><p>Sirius had pinned a countdown to Harry's arrival on the wall of his studio; his excitement over his godson's staying in centre-of-all-chaos Grimmauld Place was palpable. They could <em>see<em> a difference in him; he spread his excitement and enthusiasm around the rest of the residents, never playing _anything_ melancholy on _Radio Rock_, so even their perennial soundtrack was upbeat, fun-filled, energising, _happy_.

There were serious matters to consider that kept him from bouncing off the walls all the time: for one, neither Maia nor Harry had received word from the Ministry about some form of punishment; but perhaps Ailith's tireless crusade to keep the Dementor attack—and the public uproar it had caused—fresh in everyone's minds; every day, morning and evening, the _Prophet_ published an article written by Ailith, covering aspects of the Ministry inquiry led by Madam Bones; the previous Wizengamot cases that voted against removing Dementors from Azkaban; public-opinion toward the Ministry, Dementors and Harry Potter since the attack; Ailith even managed to mention _Pleiades Inc. _in one article; Maia's involvement in werewolf-rights was mentioned, and Ailith had interviewed Remus both about werewolf-rights activism and teaching at Hogwarts, how he had managed with the Wolfsbane Potion, and teaching Harry the Patronus Charm. Responding to someone's heated letter that Harry and Maia both should have their wands snapped, as they both had priors on their records—Ailith had had an expert decipher the letter for clues regarding who might have written it, deciding on an angry, middle-aged witch, probably high up in the Ministry ranks due to her access to minors' records—Ailith had interviewed Dobby about the levitating pudding—all with the permission and presence of S.P.E.W. representatives.

Ailith put the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare on the map, promoting the house-elf census and mentioning plans for a future hospital for old and abused house-elves, a re-homing service and equal legal status and employment rights, and eradicating the centuries-old magical bond wizards had placed on house-elves to keep them subservient.

The article featuring Dobby's testimony over the levitating dessert had prompted an article on the attacks at Hogwarts three years ago, which Cuffe went on-record as stating Fudge had leaned on the _Prophet_ not to stir up anxiety; and, this revelation about Dobby knowing details of the Chamber of Secrets causing uproar amongst parents of the basilisk's victims, Cuffe ordered Ailith to write a full exposé on the Chamber of Secrets. Maia and Hermione spent two hours trying to stop Dobby punishing himself while Ailith interviewed him on everything he knew about the Malfoys' involvement in the Chamber of Secrets being opened, including the diary, even mentioning the rogue Bludger.

Dobby the free-elf was lauded a hero by many the day the five-page exposé on Lucius Malfoy being behind the attacks on Muggle-borns at Hogwarts appeared on the front-page of the _Prophet_. The next time they saw Dobby, popping in to Grimmauld Place, he was almost buried by letters from witches and wizards applauding him for trying to keep famous Harry Potter from danger. He did receive one suspect parcel that Mad-Eye quickly pounced on before anyone could touch it; it would have killed Dobby the instant he touched it. Suspecting it was from Dobby's former master, Mad-Eye was going to do his utmost to trace the parcel back to Lucius Malfoy, who was now under immense heat from the Wizarding public.

The next meeting after the exposé was published, all of the kids sat upstairs in silence, listening to the twins' remodelled bug receiver, as Professor Snape gave a report. On Mr Malfoy. When talk devolved into specifics of getting Harry to Grimmauld Place, George clicked off the receiver.

"Well!" Fred exclaimed, raising his eyebrows.

"That's scuppered Malfoy!" George smirked.

"Oh, I wish I could've seen old Draco's face when he read Ailith's article!" Ron grinned, the picture of triumphant satisfaction.

"I just hope Lucius Malfoy doesn't send Ailith any cursed objects," Hermione said, biting her lip.

"Hermione, Ailith's a _Daily Prophet_ reporter," Ron chuckled. "I'm sure she's dealt with cursed post before."

"Maybe we should give her one of our mini Dark-detecting Sneakoscopes," George mused.

"How do you know they're effective?" Hermione asked curiously. The twins to be highly insulted by her seeming lack of faith in their genius. "I _meant_, how do you know they're not just detecting burnt toast or something? Maia said she and Sirius stripped the house before we all got here. There isn't anything Dark left."

"Not true; those glass-fronted cabinets in the drawing-room still need emptying," George pointed out.

"Plus, Maia left us unchaperoned in London the other day," Fred added, examining his playing-cards.

"You went in Knocturn Alley?!"

"I did _not_ 'leave you unchaperoned'! You flounced off to Diagon Alley after George was sorted at St Mungo's," Maia said, lifting her quill from the accounting ledger she had started keeping to keep track of her expenditure on pocket-wireless and cosmetics experimentation. "I won't have you telling your mother fibs; I'd like to see my sixteenth birthday!"

"Mum would never punish you," George said, grinning at her.

"Yeah, she'd pick another fight with Sirius," Fred smirked, and Maia sighed.

Sirius and Mrs Weasley both had the same rather explosive temper; he blamed it on their being _distantly_ related. And with Sirius trying out uncle-hood for the first time with a teenaged niece who knew her own mind, and through whom he was still at times living vicariously, Mrs Weasley always seemed to find the worst time to pick on his parenting techniques. The evening after the Dementor attack, when she and the twins had returned from Madam Primpernelle's, Maia had been woken, not by Opal, but by the row that Remus and Chumley had vainly tried to mediate in the kitchen between Sirius and Mrs Weasley, from where Neville, Ginny and Hermione had fled for fear of curses being thrown.

Apparently, Sirius was "irresponsible and careless" for letting Maia spend the day "unchecked" so soon after her life had been put in jeopardy: Sirius had responded that Molly was smothering, and succinctly observed that she was pushing her other children away for Percy's desertion.

She was, and it might not have been fair for Sirius to say it to her face, creating tension in an atmosphere that would otherwise have been perfect, and driving a wedge between her and her twin sons. Mrs Weasley had exploded at Sirius commenting on her childrearing methods, saying a lot of nasty things about Sirius' inexperience with raising children—because he had been in Azkaban, or on the run. The implication that Sirius was a coward for hiding in Grimmauld Place hit Sirius especially hard; as did Sirius' veiled threats that he'd do whatever it took to help the twins, regardless of her, if they finally had enough of her, ran away and opened their shop.

Mrs Weasley spent the whole night crying; Sirius had blasted punk in the den until the early hours: Remus had handled Mrs Weasley; and Ailith had coaxed Sirius into a better mood.

Tension had filled the house all next morning, broken only by Opal, who had found one of the twins' finished products; draw-on facial-hair. The sight of a five-year-old girl with a full gold 'Gimli' beard had set the house ringing with laughter—mostly because Opal had thought the tube—borrowed from Maia's stock of _Lip Glass_ tubes to test the packaging—was full of flavoured lip-gloss, and while Maia had taken photographs, Chummy had helped Opal 'apply' the 'lip-gloss', "not _on_ the lips! _Around_ the lips, so it doesn't smudge when you're kissed!"

Glad Mrs Weasley had gone to check on the state of The Burrow so she hadn't witnessed what was blatantly a _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ product, hysterical with laughter, the twins had let Maia clean Opal's face after another photograph of her beaming at the camera, completely undeterred and rather impressed by having sprouted a floor-length golden beard—"But Maia, my face is _cold_ now!"—and Sirius giggled as he advertised the product on _Radio Rock_, his bad mood lifted. The others wondered why it was that Sirius seemed to love Opal so much: Sirius had confided in Maia that it was because, like Opal, Sirius knew how it felt to be despised and disowned by his own mother.

They had to stick together.

But Maia also believed Opal's irrepressible cheerfulness that drew Sirius to her; having someone like her around was such a vivid contrast to Sirius' past surroundings, Maia wasn't surprised he adored the sound of her laughter, and indulged her endless chatter.

* * *

><p>Friday, "HP Day", arrived: Sirius woke Maia in a fit of excitement; not appreciated, as Maia's alarm showed she still had another ten minutes until it would take her for her day's lesson with Professor Sprout. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but those ten minutes were ten minutes she would have savoured, and didn't get; because Sirius was bounding around, singing, "Thirteen hours to Harry! Thirteen hours to Harry!"<p>

The twins suggested slipping him enough tranquiliser to take out a dragon. They had been up late with Maia in the attic, working on the First Aid kits, and didn't appreciate the rude awakening.

"I was getting to the end of a really _good_ dream," George grumbled crabbily.

"Which of the _Harpies_ Chasers was it?" Maia asked, smirking. George gave her a sidelong glance over his teacup, his eyes sparkling.

"It was just a really good dream," he said, blushing slightly (something she'd _never_ seen him do). Fred, Ron, Cedric and Sirius ribbed him for details, and Neville grinned as he packed a pot of _Redneck-No-More_ (which he'd agreed to Beta-test for the First Aid kits for a few Sickles) into his bag.

In the greenhouses, Professor Sprout gave Maia all of her assignments back; consistent Outstanding marks; and Neville, who had shyly asked for help reviewing the past four years' worth of course-content in preparation for O.W.L. year, received a test and several essays back from the professor, who beamed with pride at him. Maia, and Neville, who'd never had prior opportunity to study Herbology in the summer before, were quickly approaching O.W.L.-standards, something Mrs Longbottom seemed very proud of. Neville's confidence in the greenhouses had started seeping into other aspects of his life, bolstered by the twins and nurtured by his friendships with Maia, Ginny and Cedric. The fact that he would already have studied O.W.L.-level Herbology before returning to Hogwarts in September for his fifth year gave Neville a supreme burst of confidence Remus said he'd always sorely needed.

There was a spring in Neville's step, despite their exhaustion, as they made their way back towards Hogsmeade at ten past five, reading each other's essays. Maia learned a lot from Neville, even as much as she did from Professor Sprout, sometimes.

"Did you need anything in Hogsmeade?" Neville asked, as he passed Maia one of her essays back.

"No," Maia said slowly, glancing around at the little chocolate-box cottages as they approached the village-square, full of shops. "Professor Sprout let me take enough cuttings from the greenhouses to keep me happy for a while."

"I wish I could invent things," Neville sighed wistfully.

"Neville, if not for your knowledge of magical herbs and fungi, mine and the twins' inventions would be sorely lacking," Maia said truthfully, smiling, pushing her sunglasses up her nose. Neville sighed.

"Mum and Dad were two of the best Aurors of their age," he said unhappily; his grandmother's constant comparisons to his parents weighed on him more than he ever let on.

"Yeah, well, Professor Sprout says you're by far the best student she's had in _years_," Maia reminded him, and a proud smile lifted Neville's face. "Your parents would be _really_ proud to hear that, Neville." Neville smiled again, but he looked sad. It was a horrible thought, but Maia preferred her parents dead to the fate that had befallen Neville's; alive, but insane, unable to recognise each other, or their own son.

At _Honeydukes_, they paused; Neville bought a small packet of _Drooble's Best Blowing Gum_, "Mum's favourite," he mumbled sadly. Maia bought him a Chocolate Frog to cheer him up, and they made their way to the _Three_ _Broomsticks_.

"Two hours to Harry!" Sirius crowed delightedly, as soon as they'd crossed the threshold. Maia eyed her uncle, glancing at the twins, who had been sprawled on the front-step, enjoying homemade ice-cream and a few moments away from the fumes of the workshop, waiting for her return.

"Did you give him _Irascible Dragon_ or something?" she asked.

"No, but he and Opal have been helping themselves to the sweet-bowl all afternoon," George grinned. "And he's been playing music to get everyone energised all day."

"We know," Neville grinned, glancing at Maia. "We had the pocket-wireless on in the greenhouses."

"Professor Sprout says the Fanged-Geraniums have a bit of a thing for Katy Perry," Maia said, and the twins smirked; so did they.

"Ailith got pictures of Sirius and Opal dancing to her," George chuckled. "He's had Opal wound up all day about Harry coming."

"So we decided to channel all that surplus energy," Fred grinned.

"And we've planned a _special_ surprise for Harry," George nodded, smirking mischievously.

"Oh, I know that look. That look threatens all that is good and right in the world," Maia said, unable to stifle a grin of her own at the infectious grin on George's face.

"Don't worry, you'll love it—"

"Harry won't—!"

"—but the rest of us will find his reaction hilarious!" George grinned.

"Are you available to conference?" Fred asked Maia, who nodded.

"You too, Neville; we need to evaluate your findings," George said; after quick showers, they joined the twins in the attic. Three slowly-whirling parchment ceiling-fans kept the room cool, as the open windows siphoned away the fumes of no fewer than eight simmering cauldrons; owls swooped in intermittently, delivering orders to either the workshop for the twins' merchandise, or the parlour, where the first few printed fairytales were being stored.

"I've never actually been in here before," Neville said thoughtfully, gazing around the workshop with wondrous eyes. It was amazing how quickly the twins had made the place their own, their personalities splashed on every surface, the once-pristine walls now almost completely covered with _stuff_.

"Well, just don't eat anything and you'll probably be fine," George said, grunting as he lifted a cardboard box onto the worktable. He flicked his wand at another, and it levitated over. "Our order from the printer." George's face shone with delight as he glanced at Maia. "Take a look!"

"Oh _wow_!" Maia grinned, plucking sheets of neatly-printed sticky labels and strips of packaging to loop around finished First Aid kits out of the box; cobalt and black for the boys' designs, fawn, champagne, soft brown and crimson for the girls', the typeface a merge of retro print and George's rather pretty, loopy handwriting (Maia's considered too elaborate for all but the final packaging band): '_Redneck-No-More_ Sunburn Balm'; '_Walk-of-Shame_ Hangover Cure'; '_In Flagrante Delicto_ Contraceptive Hangover-Cure; '_No-Evidence_! All-Purpose Stain-Remover, Excellent on Everything from Dust to Dragon-Blood'; _Ten Second Pimple Vanisher_; '_I Broke a Nail…!_ Healing Nail-Lacquer'; '_Sharp as Sphinxes_ Concentration Concoction *Not for Use During Exams'; '_All Better_ Healing Balm, For Minor Scratches and Bruises *For Injuries Over an Inch Deep, Please See a Healer'. The other box contained the three-inch bands to wrap around the fully kitted-out First Aid bags.

As Fred interviewed Neville closely for the details of his experience using _Redneck-No-More_, George tidied up the workshop, and Maia was distracted by the way his arm-muscles and back rippled and bunched, straining against his t-shirt, revealing tanned, freckled forearms. She had a habit of admiring his large hands, long, clever fingers always calloused or bruised, stained, singed. Whenever she held his hand—they'd been doing so more often than usual lately—his hands felt rough…comforting. Hers in comparison looked so elegant, flawless, though her right forefinger was taking on the Ailith-like characteristic of being almost permanently ink-stained.

Exhausted, Maia went downstairs to have a bath and put a fresh dress on, and was sitting in the den chatting with Ginny when the twins dropped downstairs with Neville. Half-listening to the broadcast, Ron was playing chess and Opal dozed in an armchair in the sun, Crookshanks cuddled up to her looking grumpy. Listening to the 'Desert Island Records' feature, Sirius dragged Tonks and Til Hughes in for someone's Transfiguration query for a N.E.W.T.-level essay during 'Homework Helper', apparently an idea that had been met with a lot of approval that had gained mention in the _Prophet_. Sirius then called Maia into the studio to announce the winner of the t-shirt design competition.

"—_after a _staggering_ response, and with a series of in-house votes to hone the selection, Niecey and I _finally_, and with much effort, many sleepless nights and excess _Irascible Dragon _consumption, found our winners…_

"_In third place, whose full _Radio Rock_ merchandise kit is winging its way towards them this very instant, is Elosevich of Scarborough._

"_Coming in second place—we nearly picked this one, didn't we, Niecey?_"

"_It was very close_," Maia said.

"_The winner of the second-place slot is Daisy of Godric's Hollow!_"

"_Gorgeous typeface_," Maia commented, looking over the original design by Daisy for the t-shirt.

"_We really did like your design, Daisy_," Sirius said enthusiastically into the microphone. "_And because it was such an _agonising_ decision, we here at _Radio Rock_ decided to produce a limited-run of the second- and third-place designs. How many did we get, Niecey?_"

"_It was twenty-five of each_," Maia said, smiling. "_So get them while they're still sizzling from the press!_"

"_That's right! And they're well worth the Sickles, believe me!_" Sirius grinned. "_They're fantastic! However, one design blew us out of the water, didn't it?!_"

"_Absolutely gorgeous_," Maia nodded.

"_Yep, Niecey's already nabbed one of the first-prize t-shirts for herself_," Sirius grinned. "_The beaded embroidery looks great, all _sparkly_. Which leads us…to the first-place winner…_" Sirius paused for effect. "_The winner of the _Radio Rock_ t-shirt competition, who'll not only be receiving the full _Radio Rock_ merchandise kit, but their very own one-of-a-kind patented _Radio Rock_ pocket-wireless…is Cecelia of Hogsmeade! Congratulations, Cecelia!_" Sirius pressed a button, and jubilant applause rang out. "_Starting tomorrow, if you head over to _Mal's Record Shack_ in Diagon Alley, you can have a look at the poster of several _Radio Rock_-lovers modelling the t-shirts! You can also pick up an owl-order form for _Radio Rock _merchandise, now with t-shirts included. _

"_Twenty-five percent of the profits from _Radio Rock _merchandise goes straight to the fund for _Werewolves In Need_ education programmes. Each order-form contains a box you can tick to contribute an extra Sickle to the _W.I.N._ fund, so please be generous!_ _And now, to celebrate the closing of the competition, this _Simon & Garfunkel _song is dedicated to our winner_!" Sirius clicked on 'Cecelia' by _Simon & Garfunkel_; and Maia laughed as she and Sirius sang along.

"_This next song goes out to my godson, who is the _coolest kid_ in the country, and—_" Sirius checked the clock—"_he's about to set foot into this den of iniquity we were at _Radio Rock_ like to call home! When we get back, I've got another treat—it's a Very Foolish Thing!_" He clicked a button, and the jingle the kids had recorded, "_a Very Foolish Thing!_" played. "_Here's _The Clash, _with 'London Calling_'." No sooner had Sirius clicked on the record than the doorbell rang.

"He's here!"

"Harry Potter!" Opal squealed excitedly, throwing herself out of the room; everyone threw themselves to the stairs, piling into the hall; they were like insects, squiggling out of every nook and cranny in the house. The noise-level trebled in an instant, everyone eager to say hello, Opal complaining as she tried to get between people's legs to see "Harry Potter! Harry Potter! Harry Potter is here! I want to see him! Let me see!" Maia hoisted Opal onto her hip to give her a glimpse over Ginny's head as Hermione launched herself at Harry with a shriek.

"Harry! How are you? Are you alright? We've got _so_ much to talk about, Harry! S.P.E.W.—we've got two hundred and _thirty-eight_ members since that article about Dobby in the _Prophet_! And you've got to tell us—the_ Dementors_! Have you been listening to the wireless? It's good, isn't it! Have you heard anything from the Ministry? Maia hasn't! But they can't expel you, even if they wanted to—the Ministry has no jurisdiction over Hogwarts—and anyway, there's provision in the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery for the use of magic in life-threatening situations!"

"Let him breathe, Hermione!" Ron grinned.

"—my boy's here! My boy is here! Where is he? Where is my godson?!" Sirius leapt down the stairs, diving through the crowd to get to Harry. Harry's bottle-green eyes fell on Sirius, then popped, his jaw dropping comically.

"_Sirius_?"

"_The one and only_!" the twins crooned. Harry looked stunned.

"Sirius, you're…"

"Drop-dead gorgeous; absolutely dashing; sexy; _swoon_-worthy?" Sirius asked, smirking, grabbing Harry in a bone-crunching hug as he sighed, "I've heard it all."

"But… What _happened_ to you?" Harry blurted, making Sirius bark a laugh.

"What happened to me? Twelve meals a day, a heat-wave and all the Rejuvenation Drafts I could take!" Sirius laughed. "Good food and sunshine are amazingly cathartic." Harry was still staring at his unrecognisable godfather. He chuckled, gesturing at Maia. "You've met my niece, of course."

"Yeah," Harry said dazedly, glancing from Sirius to Maia. He appeared to give himself a mental shake. "Yeah, er…hi, Maia."

"Hi, Harry," she smiled. "You alright?"

"Yeah. You?" Harry asked; Maia nodded.

"Harry, you know everyone else, but this is Opal Ruffio," Sirius said, giving a now incredibly-shy Opal a kiss on the cheek, "who'd better go and get her Swear Jar before I go and do a Very Foolish Thing."

"I'll be right there!" Opal cried, wriggling out of Maia's grip; they heard her panting up to the third-floor, shouting incoherently back at them. "Maia, give Harry the tour then come right up to the studio!" Sirius said, grabbing Harry for another huge hug before darting up the stairs. "Really glad you're here, Harry!"

"He's doing another Very Foolish Thing?" Harry said, glancing at Maia, who grinned and nodded; Sirius only ever told her the Very Foolish Suggestion he finally picked before he broadcasted it live, so she knew exactly what he was going to get up to tonight. Grinning, Harry said, "I liked the last one."

Everyone chuckled; the others made their way up to the den, while Maia gave Harry the condensed tour of the lower-storeys, preparing a bowl of popcorn and bottles of Butterbeer on a tray in the kitchen, where Kreacher was taking tea with Dobby—who squealed and flung himself at his hero—and the two house-elves who had come to S.P.E.W. after the article on Dobby, Dashy and _tiny_ Tink. Kingsley and Remus, helping themselves to drinks, glanced up at Maia, levitating the tray.

"Going up to the studio?"

"Sirius is doing a Very Foolish Thing," Maia grinned. "It's a _cracker_!"

"Which one did he decide on?" Remus asked, frowning subtly; Maia just smiled, pointing her wand, and Harry followed her up to the den, where everyone was fidgeting with excitement, grinning. Harry's jaw dropped, and Maia laughed at his expression.

When the twins said they had decided to channel Opal's boundless energy and hyped-up enthusiasm over Harry's appearance at Grimmauld Place, they meant they had corralled her into helping Ginny decorate the den; perhaps Ginny had found the decorating charms Maia had used on the _Radio Rock_ badges, but the den was an eye-watering array of gold and scarlet decorations, incorporating Chinese-Fireball dragons, Gryffindor lions and Snitches in the theme, every surface groaning with streamers, banners on the walls, the ceiling draped with strings of glittering golden bubbles from the chandelier, sparkling gold and champagne confetti swirling idly from nowhere, every photograph draped with tinsel. Maia put the bowl of popcorn down, divvying out the bottles of Butterbeer after snapping the caps off, and watched Sirius change the record.

"Is he getting ready?" she asked.

"After this song," George said, grinning.

"Can't believe you won't tell us what he's going to do," Fred said, pouting.

"It would ruin the surprise," Maia grinned; as the record ended, they all turned to stare at the window into the studio; Maia tugged out her camera, and smiled, sipping her Butterbeer before setting it on the coffee-table.

"_Alright, this is the situation. I asked all of you to demand me to do a Very Foolish Thing. You sent ideas by their _millions_. However, one idea defeated them all_," Sirius said, grinning from ear to ear; late in the evening, he wore a pair of sunglasses in the glowing golden-amber lamps, the fairies and the other glowing illuminations, with his black silk shirt open slightly at the throat, grinning lazily. "_So I am proud to announce that I will soon be the first wizard to say the 'f' word on Wizgle radio in all of the United Kingdom_." At this, everyone in the den burst into cheers, the twins most enthusiastic of all."_Thank you_." Sirius grinned.

"_My aim is not to offend, it is to entertain, and maybe perhaps also to educate a smidge. Because if you cast an Unforgivable Curse, someone gets tortured or dies; if you drop an atomic bomb, many hundreds of _thousands_ of people die. If you hit a woman, love dies. The same goes for crashing your motorcycle_," Sirius added, his lip trembling reminiscently.

"But, _if you say the 'f' word, nothing actually happens. You might get a slap on the wrist or soap in the mouth, but that's the worst of it. So, here we go, especially for you, the 'f' word_," Sirius said, as Remus leapt through the den and burst into the studio, drawing his hand across his throat furiously, eyes wide. "…_F_…first _though, this very fine piece of music_." He switched on another record.

"Aw!" Maia called, disappointed; everyone booed and hissed and shot meaningless insults they didn't mean.

"You can't do this!" Remus said adamantly, giving Sirius a reproving look Fred muttered "he must've used back when he was a Prefect."

"Why not?" Sirius asked indignantly. "It's just a word."

"Charming thought, but here's the simple situation, old friend; the authorities already _dislike_ you; if you do this, they will _hate_ you, and by hook or by crook they will find a way of closing you down," Remus warned. "Governments _loathe_ people being free. Please."

"Boo!" everyone catcalled and jeered.

"Alright," Sirius sighed, leaning back lazily in his chair, the expression around his lips thoughtful, and a tiny bit amused. "I'm thinking about it…" A second later, he sighed, clicking on the microphone. "_My dear comrades, I have some very sad news; the Powers That Be have ordained that the 'f' word is a word too far, but, at least for now, even though our dreams of freedom have died a tragic death, _Led Zeppelin_ is still with us_." He put on 'Dazed and Confused'.

"_Thank you_," Remus said. Sirius sighed.

"_I don't know why you had to do that, Moony_," he said. "_I was only going to say 'fuck' once. You know, one tiny little fuck_."

"_There's no such thing as a tiny little fuck_," Remus said coolly.

"_Yeah, there is; just ask Ron's girlfriend_!" Fred called loudly, laughing; the studio door was open. Maia glanced at the speakers; had his voice echoed?

"_Bastard_!" Ron swore, pushing Fred off the edge of the sofa where he'd been precariously balanced; Fred yelped, and fell with a great splash of spilt Butterbeer.

"_Be that as it may, there's no fuck so small it won't fuck us up_," Remus said, sighing tiredly; Maia had never actually heard him swear before. Perhaps the dam had broken on this rare occasion. "_One day, in a world of dreams, you'll be able to say 'wank' or 'bollocks' or even 'cock' on the radio, but 'fuck'? Never_." There was a tiny smile playing at the corners of Sirius' lips, and Maia gasped at the same time George sat up straighter, gaping; he grinned, and threw himself at the studio door.

"_Excuse me, My Liege_?" he said, eyes wide, grinning.

"_Speak and be recognised by your Emperor, mortal_," Sirius said, with supreme carelessness.

"_You flicked your mike up in the studio_." Sirius was a very convincing actor, Maia had to say; when George's words seemed to register, he gave a start, turning to the main apparatus. Remus' eyes widened.

"Did I? _Oh dear_!" he said, with amusement and irony drenching every syllable. "_Sorry, sorry_!" he chuckled, grinning. Remus' face fell; he pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing, as hysterical laughter exploded in the den, people wiping their eyes as their grins glittered. "_I do apologise to everyone out there for the…four, what was it_—?"

"_Five_!" Maia called, grinning.

"—_for the _five_ 'f' words from Moony_," Sirius laughed handsomely. "Led Zeppelin _will continue undisturbed_…" Turning to his oldest friend, yet again the victim of his sense of humour, he said, "_I'm sorry, Moony, but, you know, I thought you sounded wonderful. You have a bloody _beautiful_ voice for radio_."

"_Fuck off_," Remus snapped, and Maia thought she caught his lips twitch as everyone hailed him with a roaring round of applause.

"_Oooh! That's_ six!" Sirius laughed delightedly, his deep chuckles resonating over the wireless, then he turned the mike off and let _Led Zeppelin_ take over. Everyone was laughing so hard they didn't see Mrs Weasley.

"_WHAT _DO_ YOU _THINK_ YOU ARE _DOING?" she screamed. Sirius jumped; as did everyone else in the room.

"The public has spoken," was all Sirius would say, taunting Mrs Weasley with a lazy grin. "They wanted the 'f' word, they got it!"

"It was an _historic_ moment, Mum!" Fred grinned.

"Yeah, be glad you didn't miss it!" George winked. "Songs will be written about this moment! Everyone will be asking where you were when it happened! You can tell your grandkids, _I was there_."

"You'll earn major cool-points!" Fred grinned.

Ron slumped out of his chair, howling with laughter; at the look on Mrs Weasley's face, Fred and George hid theirs in their Butterbeers; Fred wiped his eyes, crying with hysterical laughter; George was hiccoughing. Mrs Weasley threw Sirius a _very_ nasty look as Opal bounded over to the studio, gleefully offering up the Swear Jar, which rattled and glittered with bronze Knuts.

"Hermione counted twelve swears!" Opal chirped. "Twenty-four Knuts, please!"

"What is that little girl still doing up?" Mrs Weasley demanded. Opal immediately went to clamber into Sirius' lap, his long legs crossed on the desk. Opal peeked through the window at Mrs Weasley.

"Daddy said I could because Harry Potter's coming!" Opal called to the plump red-haired lady. "I'm not going to bed!"

"One hour, and you're going up to bed, poppet," Sirius said, gently stroking a hand over Opal's hair as he changed one of the records. Opal sighed, but when she glanced over at Mrs Weasley, her face was the picture of gleeful childish triumph.

"Alright," Opal agreed easily. With a glower at Sirius as he counted out twenty-four Knuts (from the rolls of the coins he kept especially), pretending to be put out and grumble over the loss of his money, Mrs Weasley turned on her heel and stormed out of the den. The atmosphere doubled; everyone gathered in the den—Tonks; Ailith; Bill and Mr Weasley; Chumley arrived with sealed packets of letters for the twins from her nieces and nephews; Lance stopped by long enough to talk to Harry about his performance during the First Task; Remus, coaxed back into the den by Tonks with a glass of red wine, came in with Mrs Lovett, who had come by to drop off a lot of altered robes and take away another load, with a packet of letters for Maia from thankful werewolves—and when Jack appeared to take over from Sirius in the studio, shaking Sirius' hand and grinning about the Very Foolish Thing, it was like a miniature impromptu party, especially with the decorations, courtesy of Ginny and Opal, whose contribution was a "WELCOME HOME HARRY!" banner someone had outlined for her, and which she had evidently spent quite a little while painstakingly colouring in. She was exceptionally proud of her banner, flirting with Harry as only a child could, presenting him with a plate of little fairy-cakes she had decorated herself especially for him.

"Alright, Ope, stop flirting with Harry—"

"Yeah, you'll be in competition with Ginny," Fred smirked.

"Anyway, we've got our own surprise for Harry," George beamed.

"You'll love it, Opal!" Fred grinned mischievously.

"—and you, Ginny!"

"What are you two on about?" Ginny sighed, her cheeks touched with pink as she blushed.

"Well—"

"Since you asked—"

"We are proud to present the very _first ever_…"

"Harry Potter action-figure!" Fred crowed, as George whipped out a male doll with scruffy black hair, vibrant emerald-green eyes, a scar on his forehead and little round wire glasses; his clothing was a uniform of black robes, which were singed, blood-soaked, torn and grass-stained; he had a little wand, and a miniature working model of a snowy own in a little cage, and a scuffed miniature trunk.

"You—"

"—made a Harry Potter _dolly_!" George smirked, navy eyes sparkling.

"Good, isn't he?!" Fred sighed, his smile sparkling as he played with the doll affectionately.

"Why's he all dirty?" Opal asked, taking the action-figure from George curiously.

"We thought we'd go for realism," George said, making Ron go breathless with laughter as Hermione snorted.

"And, look—he comes with extra blood to douse over him," Fred said, pulling a little bottle out of his pocket, "—and one of _slime_."

"We were going to make some miniature bandages—"

"But we didn't have time," Fred sighed.

"However, we thought we could do several different sets—the Philosopher's Stone and the Mirror of Erised—"

"Dad's _Ford_ Anglia and the Acromantula—"

"The Chamber of Secrets, Dobby, the basilisk, and Ginny—"

"So you can play _hero_ again whenever you want, Gin," Fred smirked. A second later, he was screaming; using Chumley's wand, Ginny had hit him with a Bat-Bogey Hex.

"Ginny," Mr Weasley admonished, though his lips were twitching as he cleaned Fred's face with a twitch of his wand. George helped his twin off the floor, grinning.

"George?" Opal said, examining the Harry Potter doll. "Georgie, will you make a dragon for him? And a Triwizard Cup?"

"For you, pet?" George sighed lovingly, petting Opal's hair. "_Anything_." Opal beamed; Maia teased that they'd never see their prototype again; when Opal dragged Chummy upstairs to read her a bedtime story, she took the Harry Potter dolly with her.

"Don't worry, that wasn't the prototype," George said quietly, offering her the little glass of cider he'd been sipping; when she climbed onto the large armchair in which he sat, he shifted to make room, putting his arm around her shoulders to give them more room. "We reckoned Harry would try to destroy that one as soon as he saw it! So we made two!" Maia chuckled; Harry's face had been _priceless_, and she was glad she still had a few frames on her film to capture it.

"Are we working tonight?" she asked quietly, leaning her head back against George's arm, gazing at him lazily. "If we can get all those bottles labelled, we can start putting together the First Aid kits tonight."

"We make a good team," George said softly, with a lazy, sincere smile.

"Yep," Maia agreed. As the guests started to make their exit, some still wiping their eyes over the Harry Potter doll, and Harry's reaction to it, a comfortable quiet, punctuated by Jack's broadcast, and Ron grumbling over Bill slaughtering him at chess, settled over the den.

Soon, only the regulars remained; Tonks, Ailith, Bill, and Mrs Weasley dropped in to remind her husband about the time; Remus was dozing in an armchair, oblivious to the sweet, indulgent smiles that Tonks gave him in between making her nose change shape—she had had to explain to Harry about Metamorphmagi after turning her hair from violent violet to a popping shade of bubblegum pink. Everyone was enjoying the fact that it was Friday, helping themselves to an extra drink, sharing sweets and stories from the office, relaxing.

"You know, I'm surprised at you," Sirius said, gazing at Harry. "I thought the first thing you'd do when you got here would be to start asking questions about Voldemort." Cuddled up with George, Maia felt him tense and shiver at the sound of Voldemort's name, and they both glanced up from her palm, which George had been pretending to read, with outrageous results. The atmosphere in the den changed; Remus woke with a start, looking slightly dazed before his gaze found Sirius.

"Well… I was going to," Harry said, "but with what Maia's been telling me the last few weeks, there'd not be much for you to say about Voldemort. Maia says she's not allowed in the Order, so—"

"And she's quite right!" Mrs Weasley bristled. "You're too young!"

"Since when did someone have to be in the Order of the Phoenix to ask questions?" Sirius said lightly. "Harry's been trapped with those awful bloody people for nearly a month, he's got the right to know what's happen—"

"Hang on!" George interrupted, sitting up straighter so Maia had to take care not to spill their cider.

"How come Harry gets his questions answered?" Fred demanded.

"We've been trying to get stuff out of you for nearly a month, and you haven't told us a single stinking thing!" George said.

"'_You're too young'_. '_You're not in the Order_'," Fred said, mimicking his mother's voice perfectly. "Harry's not even of age!"

"It's not my fault you haven't been informed what the Order's doing," Sirius said, smirking subtly at Maia, apparently guessing that she'd divulged whatever information she had, regardless of whether she was supposed to have known it or not. "That's your parents' decision. Harry, on the other hand—"

"It's not up to you to decide what's good for Harry! _Or_ Maia!" Mrs Weasley said sharply.

"My position as godfather and last-remaining-relative would suggest otherwise," Sirius retorted, frowning.

"You haven't forgotten what Dumbledore said, I suppose?" Mrs Weasley scowled, looking almost dangerous.

"Which bit?" said Sirius, with the air of preparing for a fight as he set his glass down on the coffee-table.

"The bit about telling Harry more than he _needs to know_," Mrs Weasley said fiercely. Everyone under the age of eighteen was watching the argument as if spectators at a tennis rally. Remus' eyes were fixed on Sirius.

"Molly, there's a different between keeping Harry informed and inducting him straight into the Order," Sirius said impatiently. "But given this lot's propensity to stumble into hair-raising adventures at the best of times, frankly it would be idiotic to give them half-baked inklings toward the truth!"

"So you think I'm being idiotic trying to protect them?!"

"_Warning, Warning_," George murmured, gazing warily at his mother.

"I think the time has come in your children's lives when your mollycoddling has started to suffocate them!" Sirius said heatedly.

"Hear, hear," Fred breathed, and Mrs Weasley shot Sirius a _very_ dirty look; Maia wondered if she had heard Fred.

"They've got a right to at least know the basics," Sirius said, "at the very least to stave off some of their curiosity. _Not_ giving them a few answers could be dangerous. Especially Harry—"

"He's not a member of the Order of the Phoenix," Mrs Weasley said heatedly, beginning to swell. "He's not yet fifteen!"

"And he's dealt with as much as most in the Order," Sirius said proudly, "and more than some. And you'll remember it was _your_ vote that stopped us asking the kids whether they wanted to join—"

"Sirius," Remus said sharply.

"Hang on!"

"We could've _joined_—"

"—and you voted against letting us?"

"Of _course_ she did," Fred scowled scornfully.

"Yes I did!" Mrs Weasley said heatedly, her cheeks flushing. "You're not even out of _school_—"

"We're of age!"

"And I've done _loads _of stuff with Harry!"

"Mum, I _wanted to_—!"

"No." This time, it wasn't Mrs Weasley who spoke, but Remus. "Please don't blame your mother; we all agreed _not_ to allow under-seventeens—who have _finished_ their Hogwarts education," he added, as Fred and George opened their mouths, "to join the Order. Sirius." He shot his friend a reproving look for having let the Kneazle out of the sack.

"Moony, it's not even the _same_ this time," Sirius frowned impatiently. "We're a bunch of political activists, not _warriors_. And if what Amelia suspects is true, we'll need them on the inside."

"Sirius," Remus frowned, sighing tiredly. "They all do their part already."

"They should at least be given the opportunity to do _more_ if they wanted," Sirius protested.

"Sirius, all but Cedric and the twins have the Trace on them," Remus said patiently. "We may have Amelia, but if the Improper Use of Magic Office picked up evidence they'd performed magic in—on _guard-duty_, what would happen?"

"Well, you know my position on _that_, anyway," Sirius said lightly, giving Mrs Weasley a dirty look.

"He's too young!" Mrs Weasley hissed in a half-whisper.

"Then you tell me when he'll be old and wise enough to know! Twenty years? Fifty?" Sirius snapped. "You tell me when he'll be ready to accept that!"

"Sirius." This time, it was Ailith who spoke. She gazed at Sirius, silently communicating something. The tension in Sirius' shoulders visible relaxed as he gazed at her.

Sighing, Sirius glanced at Mrs Weasley, saying, "I stand by my previous statement; he'd be better knowing now. They'd all be better off knowing; he'd have people to confide in."

"Confide what in?" Fred asked immediately.

"It's about that guard-duty you're always going on about," George guessed, gazing shrewdly from Sirius to Remus to his mother. "It wasn't Harry—it's something to _do_ with him, though, isn't it?"

Sirius opened his mouth, but it was Mrs Weasley who snapped, "No! That's enough! Sirius, you ought not to forget that he's still at school!"

"Meaning I'm a careless and irresponsible godfather," Sirius drawled with superb indifference, drawing on Mrs Weasley's argument from a few days ago. "I'm sorry I don't have twenty-six years and seven kids' worth of experience parenting, _Molly_—"

"Well, it would've been quite difficult to gain experience while you were locked up in Azkaban!" Mrs Weasley sneered angrily; Ailith grabbed on to Sirius' belt to jerk him back onto the sofa as he jumped up, his expression a mask of anger, but it was Maia who spoke up for the first time, rankled by Mrs Weasley's jibe.

"Hey!" she snapped loudly, glaring at Mrs Weasley, who no slightly resembled a snarling tiger. She had always got on well with Mrs Weasley, unless the older woman fiddled with her kitchen-utensils. But using Sirius imprisonment against him… "You don't get to use Azkaban against Sirius! He may not have been around when Harry was being bullied by the Dursleys, but Sirius did what no-one else in history has done and escaped Azkaban because _he alone_ recognised the danger Harry was in. And since he's been out, Sirius has always been there when Harry's needed him—hasn't he?"

"That's right," Harry said fiercely, nodding fervently. Sirius' features relaxed somewhat, and he gave Maia and Harry a small smile.

"I'd like to think I know what James and Lily would want for their son," Sirius said, to nobody in particular, "as I was the first person they ever _told_ about it in the first place!"

"Well, they're not here anymore, Sirius," Mrs Weasley said shrilly. "So it falls on those he _has_ got—"

"He's not your son."

"He's as good as!"

"Let's not turn this into a competition of Who Loves Harry More," George said, surprisingly gentle.

"Yeah, Ginny would trounce both of you," Fred smirked, making kissy noises at Ginny. Just like that, the atmosphere broke. Before Ginny could throw a large Gobstone at Fred's skull, Mrs Weasley snapped, "Ginny—_bed_!"

"It's not even _eleven_, Mum!"

"I don't care—we've got a busy day tomorrow!" Mrs Weasley snapped.

"Oh yeah?!" Fred smirked.

"Doing what?" George frowned.

"You're going to help me go through the drawing-room—" Uproar.

"_Like hell_—!"

"It's the _weekend_!"

"We're going to the Hobbit-hole!"

"We've got the were-babies and Chummy and some of her lot coming!"

"If you want to be the one to tell those darling little innocent faces they're not going swimming or playing Quidditch or Badminton, you be my guest!"

"As if they won't face enough disappointment later in life!"

"Fine!" Mrs Weasley shouted. "Fine! Doss around for the rest of the summer!"

"Thanks," Fred grinned, kicking his ankles up.

"Now that we've got your permission," George smirked. Scowling, Mrs Weasley slammed the door behind her.

"We _should_ sort the drawing-room out sometime," Maia added to Sirius, who grunted noncommittally.

"You've got all the stuff to decorate it, haven't you?" he asked lazily, head resting on Ailith's shoulder as she ran her fingers through his curly hair, reading a magazine and sipping some plum brandy.

"Upstairs, in the attic storage-rooms," Maia nodded. Sirius sighed.

"Maybe we'll get started on it during the week," he mused. "Might be nice to have it done before Christmas."

"Mm," Maia murmured, dozing gently against George, who was chatting with Fred, all while lazily drawing patterns on her bare arm with his finger, lulling her.

"Hey," he murmured in her ear, making her start, wide-awake, disoriented, and a little flustered at being caught cuddling up to him. Fred smirked at her when she glanced around.

"What's up?"

"Heading up to the workshop," George smiled. "You coming?"

"Yep," Maia nodded, yawning; she realised Hermione, Ron and Neville were missing. "The others gone to bed?"

"Just a few minutes ago," George assured her.

"You three off to work?" Sirius asked, moving his legs out of the way so they could pass.

"Well, you know," Fred yawned, "Chaos never sleeps."

Sirius smirked, leaning up to give Maia a kiss goodnight. "Don't stay up too late."

"And no more visits to St Mungo's," Remus intoned, giving the twins a look.

"Don't worry, we're just boxing things tonight," George assured him.

"Boxing what?" Ailith asked curiously.

"_First Aid kits_," they all beamed proudly.

"And other stuff," Fred said, glancing at George, who nodded.

"Maia, have you been working on your cosmetics?" Ailith asked, sipping her brandy. "The girls at _Witch Weekly_ are dying to sample things."

"I've got a lot of recipes refined, I just…have to package things," Maia said.

"Have you done any concept art?" Ailith asked, and Maia grinned.

"_Tonnes_," George said for her.

"You might think about sending Thomasina some copies of the artwork," Ailith smiled. "She'd get you good coverage in _Witch Weekly_."

"Thanks, Ailith," Maia said gently, and Ailith gave her a subtle wink as the twins shepherded her out of the room.

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Anyway, Harry's here now! And I'm in the process of writing chapter thirty-seven, so I've got a few more updates for you in the very-near future. Especially as university lessons start back up tomorrow… Yay (can you sense my enthusiasm?) I just had to put that scene from _The Boat That Rocked _in here; you can't have a pirate-radio station in a story without putting that in!


	30. Chapter 30

**A.N.**: This chapter is a precursor to two very packed chapters. There are lots of details in here, build-up, but some of them are…well, important.

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_30_

* * *

><p>"You know, part of me thinks it'd be worth it just to come out to Mum about the shop," George said, as Maia set up a third cauldron on the coffee-table in the parlour: one contained the base for her <em>Hello, Beautiful<em> foundation, which incorporated pore-minimising, spot-clearing potions plus dittany to smooth and heal acne scars and even skin-tone; she had named each of the shades 'Maia', 'Electra', 'Taygete', 'Alcyone', 'Calaeno', 'Sterope' and 'Merope' after the seven sisters of the Pleiades, the shades ranging from pale to ebony skin-tones. Another cauldron contained the base for her five mousse-to-powder _Poppy-Romp_ blushes—'Freshly Plucked', a delicate peach, peony-pink 'Sweet Nosegays', 'Pretty Posies' a soft, warm rose, rose-mauve 'Blooming Lovely' and for her fairytales collection, warm-mauve 'Bridal Bouquet' with delicate peach, satin-pink and subtle tangerine undertones to suit every skin-tone, even ebony. The third cauldron was softly simmering away with her ruby-red cheek-stain, named _Tease_, decadently scented with the most sumptuous Grand Prix roses, revered for their natural perfume.

"_Right_," Maia said disbelievingly, glancing over at him. Everyone but Mrs Weasley knew the twins' joke-shop was still going full-steam ahead—now with more momentum, thanks to Harry's investment and bouncing ideas off of Maia—and nobody dared tell Mrs Weasley. The twins knew they'd cause a hell of a row if they revealed the shop to their mother, and especially since Percy's desertion, they didn't think the family could handle another rift. Especially since Mrs Weasley would be wholly out of allies.

"No, really—because even if she threatened that we weren't going to open a joke-shop while we're 'under her roof', we could point out that, actually, this is Sirius' place," George said.

"D'you reckon Sirius would let us stay here if Mum kicked us out of The Burrow?" Fred asked. "His mum kicked him out, right?"

"He ran away, actually," Maia said, frowning thoughtfully. "I think Sirius probably would let you stay, he'd love the company—but at the moment, I'm not sure whether he'd agree to it for your sake, or to give your mother the proverbial archer's salute."

"That's what I thought," George sighed. "Wish Mum would lay off him, sometimes. Not his fault he's got no kids."

"And he's got a better handle on a lot of things than Mum does," Fred added. "What d'you reckon they were talking about?"

"Whatever they're keeping from Harry?" Maia said instantly, and the twins nodded. "Don't know."

"It's probably bad, whatever it is," George said heavily. "When Sirius said he was the first person Harry's parents told about 'it'…"

"It probably has something to do with Voldemort," Maia mused; Fred almost upset his cauldron.

"New rule; No mentioning the 'V' word in the workshop!" he declared.

"What? Virginity? Vasectomy?" Maia asked innocently. "I don't understand why people don't use his name; Sirius and Remus do."

"Just don't, please!" Fred asked weakly. "Poor Georgie's a delicate English rose; his darling little heart can't take it!"

Maia rolled her eyes, amused. "Anyway… Are we nearly ready to put things together?"

"Yep. Thanks to the patrons of the _Weeping Sunflower_, your double-concentration _Walk-of-Shame_ hangover-cure and the feminine _In Flagrante Delicto_ version incorporating a contraception-potion are both ready to roll," Fred said, rubbing his hands together excitedly.

They had made a silent vow not to ever mention their own testing of the _Walk-of-Shame_ hangover-cure: after the second-to-last _Talon_ reading, the twins had gotten drunk on some of Maia's homemade cider—it hadn't taken much, _The lightweights_! Maia smirked—and Maia had recorded the effects of the hangover-cure next-morning.

After throwing up three times, George had tearfully vowed he'd never get drunk again. He was such a _sweet_ drunk; but Fred had gotten moody, staring at the phosphorescently-glowing pocket-wireless she had finished working on for Opal, listening to Vittorio's late-night broadcast, before falling asleep.

"And now we've perfected our _Naked_ soap, we'll cut it into bars tonight and wrap them," George said, stifling a slight shudder at the remembered pain of burning away the flesh on his hands.

"Is that what you're calling it?" Maia giggled softly. "'_Naked'_?"

"Yep," Fred grinned. "'Removes even the worst marks and stains—'"

"'—while leaving your hands as soft as the day you were born'," George smiled, showing Maia the sheet of paper printed with eight labelled wrappers for little bars of soap, featuring powder-blue and acid forget-me-not details, retro typeface and the image of a gorgeous little red-haired baby in the corner, hands splashing in a puddle of spilt colour-change ink. The picture had actually been inspired by a photograph of George doing the very same thing as an infant; in the same photo, Fred had been giggling, shimmying a little dance—completely naked, except for his mother's sparkly purple heels.

"Can't believe you used that photograph as inspiration," Maia smiled warmly, examining the drawing of the little baby, who grinned inexplicable, giggling, and rubbed his inky hands on his little tummy and face.

"I can't believe Bill gave Chummy copies of _our_ baby-photos when they were going out, as an insurance-policy against us!" Fred said indignantly.

"I hope she's kept the really good ones for your weddings," Maia grinned.

"If they can handle us as we are now, I doubt there's _anything_ that could scare off our future brides," Fred said confidently, making Maia laugh.

"Alright…that's…done!" George exclaimed, extinguishing the flames beneath his cauldron. "Maia, grab the _Redneck-No-More_ pots for me, would you? We'll get this divvied out, wrap up the _Naked_ soaps, then we can put everything together." Darting around the workshop, they finally got the _Redneck-No-More_ sunburn balms potted; it was the last item they needed for the First Aid kits. Maia, checking on her own potions, split the foundation into smaller glass cauldrons, adding pigment for each shade, and using charms she had learned that would help the foundation change hue to perfectly match the wearer's complexion. She giggled, coming back into the workshop, aiding George as he observed the production-line that had begun, little cobalt and clear pots full of cream levitating past the coils of labels attached with a Sticking Charm, sealing themselves perfectly on the sides of the pots, each full, labelled pot nestling itself back in the original box.

"I love magic," Maia sighed softly, smiling. There were things she _hated_ about the magical world, but this…this was magic at its _best_. The boys brought out a box of fifty faux-leather shaving-bags, half black, half natural brown: Maia pulled out the box of fifty unique clutch-purses she'd sewn in the weeks since she had come up with her clutch-purse designs, and the First Aid kits. They were made of different textiles, matched with beautiful linings charmed to repel stains, sometimes with zips in contrasting colours, sometimes gold, each zip featuring a little round medallion with the _Pleiades Inc._ symbol—the constellation itself—embossed onto it; the boys' shaving-bags were stamped with a tiny _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ monogram.

One of the storage-rooms had been converted into another, smaller workshop, where bolts of faux-leather and fake dragon-hide in numerous hues including ruby-red, sapphire, bottle-green, sunflower-yellow, fuchsia, iridescent plum, purplish-black, peacock and glittery gold were kept, with a sturdy old dining-table where Maia used magic to cut out the shape of the envelopes; the leather embosser they'd invested in stamped the red, sapphire, bottle-green and amber envelopes with Hogwarts' House crests, the black ones with the Hogwarts crest, while the brown ones received a small _Weasleys' Wizards Wheezes_ and _Pleiades Inc._ monogram each at the bottom; after the flat templates had been shaped to fold easily, they were each lined with rich stain-repelling card from the enormous collection of patterned papers Maia and the twins had collected, with subtle ridges moulded inside which things like the ink-eraser, the _Naked_ soap, mini lip-gloss, mini hair-dye stick, colour-change ink bottle, stink-pellet and Skiving Snackbox sweet could be nestled so they didn't roll around, damaging the other contents. The little silver pin (or gold, black-silver or bronze) was added last, before the contents were secured.

While the twins put together their shaving-bag kits—nestling all the bottles and pots into a specifically-designed card tray before tucking it into the bag—Maia put together ten girls' envelopes of each design, and ten boys'—alternating the type of Skiving sweet, lip-gloss, stink-pellet and colour of hair-dye—with the self-sharpening pencils and spell-checking quills the twins had, long before they'd ever met Maia, perfected, a little glass screw-top pot of colour-change ink; going through the paper-cupboard, she found the printed stationery she had designed—a handful from a collection of fifty-odd design concepts inspired by her fairytales; random pretty doodles; fun 'Muggle' designs like a border of double-decker buses, bicycles, and hot-air balloons; Hogwarts House mascots; Quidditch teams and animals (magical and normal)—and tucked five sheets of stationery, five envelopes and a 2"x2" square of corresponding stickers into the hidden, fully-lined, Extended compartment between the case and the card-lining. She opened the order she and the twins had put together, a retro-style photograph Ailith had taken of Maia's torso, wearing her school blouse, and putting on her tie, which the twins had charmed to show arrows with each step, and they had gone to the printer with. Each little card, barely the size of a _Polaroid_ picture, was added to the top of the envelopes' contents before she added the pin and folded the flaps together, pinning the topmost one in place. When the last had been completed and double-checked, she found the printed-and-cut packaging, a three-inch-wide band of plain Kraft card printed with the colourful Rod of Asclepius, retro typeface inside a forget-me-not square border dubbing the product 'FIRST AID', with Maia's handwriting scrawling elegantly across one corner with '_Everything You Need to Solve Hallway Emergencies, in One Reusable Case_' in acid-lilac, the word 'CONTAINING' printed in orange with the list of contents in small black retro type beneath, and the two monograms—_Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ and _Pleiades Inc._—at the bottom. She used a Sticking Charm to fasten the bands around the finished envelope Kits, storing them in their appropriate cubby-holes in the cupboard, and turned to the girls' First Aid clutch-purses.

She had had all of the girls—and several of Chummy's nieces—trying out a floral-scented and flavoured translucent-pink lip-gloss chock full of iridescent shimmer filled with blue flecks to give the illusion of whiter teeth, with a hydrating, softening formula. Having honed the recipe, Maia gathered a sample-sized tube of each gloss with a nail-file she had designed (in the same patterns as some of her stationery and nail-wraps) and a bottle of healing nail-lacquer. She put the three into a little drawstring bag of printed cotton in different pretty designs, before adding it to the tray of girls' products, before tucking them inside clutch-purses and sticking their specific labels around them.

They had purposely kept one of each design unwrapped, for photography purposes as much as to show everyone their completed product, and as soon as Maia had tucked the last clutch-purse into its cubby-hole, they dashed downstairs to the den, grinning, as most of the others were still up, keeping themselves entertained with various personal pursuits, like chess, knitting, reading or homework. Sirius was still awake, too, though by the look of him, not for long. They took great delight in premiering the finished First Aid kits. It was on a high note they went to bed, after Maia had finished brewing her _Tease_ cheek-tint, put her finished blushes and foundations into sterilised apothecary jars while she adjusted the concepts for packaging.

* * *

><p>The weekend was a long hazy, sun-drenched memory that began in the early-morning, working up in the attic; preparing picnic-treats in the kitchen before heading off to the Hobbit-hole with swimsuits, broomsticks, books and other amusements; Sirius moved his broadcasting equipment and a day's selection of records, greeting Vera, Horatio and Thomas as well as Memory, who were all shrieking with delight with Opal by the time Chummy arrived by Floo, accompanied by a half-dozen of her nieces and nephews. No one recognised Sirius, and so his alias of 'Padfoot' combined with the silver-framed sunglasses he never took off, deflected any suspicion that he was really an insane mass-murderer.<p>

An impromptu kids' party had been thought up by Chummy, who had met the rather reserved were-babies on occasion and thought a little exposure to other children might help them, as much as a little proximity might stop an aversion to werewolves in her young nieces and nephews before society could nurture it. She wasn't wrong to bring the children together; by dinnertime, they were thick as thieves, smiles all around, everyone exhausted from playing in the sun all day, pink-cheeked, glowing with tan, smelling faintly of brine from the sea, where the twins had terrorised the girls with a bucket of jellyfish.

A few visitors popped by for an open-flame barbecue in the evening, including Bill, Remus and Tonks, Ailith, and Mr Weasley, Jules and Memory's dad; the kids made makeshift tents after roasting marshmallows over the fire, telling ghost-stories, playing the twins' board-game, a miniature firework-display from the twins following Harry's spooky story of the underwater Second Task, signalling bedtime.

Sunday morning was spent at the Hobbit-hole, with a late-breakfast cooked over the open-fire; and by noon, Chummy had escorted her nieces and nephews home; Memory came to Grimmauld Place to play with Opal; the twins had two orders for a Harry Potter doll (which Opal now dragged _everywhere_ with her) complete with model Hungarian Horntail, _Ford_ Anglia and Actomantula; and by the time a late roast lunch was set on the dining-table by Kreacher, Tink and Dashy, with fresh vegetables from the Hobbit-hole, word came via Bill that Chummy had had an argument with several of her siblings, who hadn't been told that their children would be going camping with _werewolves_—Chummy had apparently hissed in response that "it's attitudes like _that_ that turn werewolves into monsters, not their monthly transformations!" leaving her brothers, sisters and in-laws highly ashamed; inviting herself to Number Twelve for Sunday-lunch in a mood, Chummy had been highly gratified that she had left her nieces and nephews in screaming fits over their parents forbidding them from ever seeing Opal, Memory, Horatio, Vera and Thomas again.

"I won't have racial prejudice in my family," was all Chummy had said, and she perked up after sending three of the twins' _Bath Bombs_ to her sister and two sisters-in-law _in_ _apology_.

"Remind me why you won't marry me," Fred sighed, gazing lovingly at Chummy.

"I'm a rake," she winked.

A fresh _tarte au pomme_ prepared by Tink, who had been lauded by her pureblood family as the best cook in Britain, completed Sunday-lunch, and the various guests dispersed as the afternoon wore on. Tonks appeared in a whirl of excitement, brandishing a new record, and listening to it premiere on _Radio Rock_ was the only time Maia and the twins stepped away from the workshop since returning from the Hobbit-hole. They had spent all afternoon upstairs, Maia working on her collection of nail-lacquers, nail-wraps, packaging for her blushes and foundation, pricing; and several new products she had experimented with earlier.

_Rum Punch _was a golden-bronze liquid highlighter, a 'Beach-in-a-Bottle', scented with spiced rum, and perfect to dab at the contour points of the face after a long day in the sun. In contrast, _The Star Shines_ was a silvery-white pearl liquid, 'Bottled Starlight for a Luminous Glow', scented with night-blooming flowers. She had also, over the last week, perfected three new baked powders—_Sweet-Cheeks!_, 'Perky Blush for the Girl in a Rush', a peach-pink powder, scented with a floral bouquet of roses, peonies, freesias, tuberose, violets and jasmine, _Rudie Nudie_, a soft bronzer subtly scented with orchids, the box patterned with bronze snakeskin, and _Bombshell_, a quartet of rose, tangerine, plum and satin-pink powders blended in a swirl to compliment all skin-tones, the powder subtly scented with jasmine.

Creating a full batch each time, Maia had bottled fifty of each of her twenty-nine nail-lacquer shades, as well as the eight that matched her _Pucker Up _and _Lip Tar_ hues, the Hogwarts collection and her sample-size bottles of _Dazzle Drops_. And, thanks to the success with her _Not On My Pillow!_ makeup-remover, and her combined efforts with the twins, she had finally perfected _Lipstick Queen_, the 'perfect' red lipstick. Over the weekend, Ginny, Tonks, Opal and Chummy had tried out Maia's hair-dye sticks and the diamond-glitter gel Maia had named _Nectar_ on their hair, to vivid effects.

The twins worked on several of their own products, and until late in the evening, another glorious sunset dying, when they had a reading of _The Talon_, during which they inducted Harry "Dr Clabbert" Potter into the staff, they worked hard, pausing only when Kreacher prepared them a jug of Butterbeer with some cake, and only to check in with Maia's progress, as she did with theirs. It was fascinating to watch the twins work; it was the only time Maia ever saw them…_serious_.

Her timer set for the hair-smoothing serum she had been adjusting, Maia spent the time freed up by Kreacher cleaning up after them, sending off the last of the advance-orders for several of her fairytales. They were selling with astounding swiftness; Ailith and Sirius had been right, there was a niche in the Wizarding market for Muggle fairytales. She also boxed up and sent off five orders for the twins.

During the _Talon_ reading, they sat in hysterics as the twins performed an impromptu Jeeves and Wooster skit, after Fred read out his review of _Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit_ by P.G. Wodehouse; Maia treated everyone to the next instalment of _Opie_ and an illustrated excerpt from _Bluebeard_; the twins gave another memoir from their collection of past misdeeds, and after everyone had read out their articles (their confidence in their own journalistic talents growing, even Neville's) the _Advertisements_ section was examined, featuring a few of the twins' brand-new products, the concepts for Maia's foundation and blush for the female readers to 'vote' on, an order-form for the First Aid kits; and the twins pulled out the small, upholstered trunk, in which they had hidden several products for a practical demonstration.

A clear gem-shaped bottle with a gold-coloured stopper produced bubbles, but no bubbles Maia had ever seen; they were the stuff of dreams, fairytales; every time George blew a bubble, a different shape would emerge; in hues of amber, dusky fuchsia, lilac, gold and champagne; sparkles, dainty flowers, gems and rings of sparkling gold appeared, glittering and twinkling in midair, hazy and iridescent and sparkling without any discernable source of light; each time a bubble popped, the scent of flowers or a display of muted little shimmering fireworks, like dying stars, replaced them, the rings dancing around the room, sparkling and making sounds like running one's finger around the rim of a glass.

"They're wonderful!" she breathed, beaming with delight; Opal seemed mesmerised.

"You've not even seen the boys' ones yet," Fred grinned. "Dragons, Snitches and stars."

"You must have used some sorts of enchantments on the actual bubble potion," Hermione said thoughtfully, watching George carefully blow another lungful of bubbles. "It's very clever."

"I'd never be able to create anything like that," Neville said sadly, gazing at the bubbles with wide eyes.

"You keep us in new potion ingredient ideas, Neville," Fred said sternly, gripping the blonde boy's shoulder.

"Never met anyone so knowledgeable about plants and fungi," George added thoughtfully.

"You should be proud—"

"Helping us perpetuate our creativity," George smiled.

"Neville, have you been harvesting magic-mushrooms under your bed?" Maia asked teasingly, raising her eyebrows rather sternly.

"No!" Neville laughed.

"That's a good idea, though…" Fred mused thoughtfully.

Maia showed her concept art for cosmetics packaging, earning a round of votes, and Ginny's suggestion that, since the "Chummy lot" had expressed an interest in reading _The Talon_ (due to the eldest's most Hermione-like appetite for _words_) Maia should insert all options in a copy of the paper and ask "the public" to vote.

George pointed out that most of Chummy's lot were a bit young to be wearing cosmetics, and anyway, they hadn't voted whether they were going to send copies of _The Talon_ to Chummy's nieces and nephews in the first place. Supplied with their usual tea and treats, listening to each other's articles with appropriate attention and enthusiastic applause, Maia's small wireless spewing _Radio Rock_ in the background, independently amused by knitting, chess, or, in Maia's case, her journal, they swore Harry in, divvied out word-prompts, and voted whether to send copies of _The Talon_ to Chummy's lot.

The twins were all for it; if they got one order out of it for their new products, "It'll be worth it," Fred said, sticking his hand up. Maia agreed, too—mostly because she'd written a feature on the werewolf under-elevens school Remus was preparing to propose to the Ministry; Hermione agreed because she had submitted an article on Dobby, house-elf enslavement and a copy of the S.P.E.W. manifesto. Embarrassed but pleased that Opal had awarded his Herbology piece three gold Snitches (the most she'd _ever_ given out) Neville voted to send _The Talon _out. Ron reckoned Chummy's lot were "cheeky", and wanted to charge them through the teeth for copies of the paper; Cedric said this wasn't in good sport, and he and Harry voted to send _The Talon_ out because, in Harry's words, "Why not?" So _The Talon_ received its first external audience beyond that of Number Twelve. Harry's stunning snowy-owl, Hedwig, who was much coveted by Opal, as well as Borgia and Pigwidgeon, were sent out as soon as Maia and the twins had edited a copy of the _Talon_, which they then copied again three times, with copies of all past issues, and sent them off to the eldest of each subset of Chummy's nieces and nephews they had met.

* * *

><p>Up very early, Maia helped Kreacher with the breakfast, and was there to open the window for the first wave of post-owls. A lot of post was now expected; Sirius had a running tally for the most <em>Radio Rock<em> letters received per day. The first down, and there to do it, Maia sorted through all the post, putting it in appropriate piles. With numerous unrelated people living together under the roof of Number Twelve, also base-camp for a wireless station and the secret location to an owl-order joke-shop, there were a lot of piles, and a lot of varied bits of post.

A magazine for Cedric; a letter for Neville and a delivery from _Flourish & Blotts_; five letters and a long scroll for Remus; twelve letters addressed to Hermione at S.P.E.W.; a letter for Ginny; seven for Harry; twenty-four for _Radio Rock_; thirty-six for the twins; one for _Opal_ written in simple, childlike handwriting; and seventy-two exclusively for _Maia_, including a copy of _Witch Weekly_ with a note _from the editor_. She continued to get post from people who were keeping tabs on the Ministry inquiry into the Dementor attack; and people who had received her recipe-cards or fairytales, reviewing her recipes with photographs and thanks. There was also an official-looking envelope that she opened with a wary frown; upon reading it, she let out a shriek of delight, laughing, and Apparated right into the twins' bedroom; Fred was sitting at the little desk, looking like he hadn't slept all night, while George was still asleep, looking like he'd fallen asleep in the middle in the middle of documenting a late-night burst of inspiration, his bed littered with books, high-quality colouring-pencils and his workbooks.

"Wake up!"

"Maia… Please state your reasons for using such an offensively boisterous shriek at this _ungodly_ hour," Fred said, gazing at her with shadowed eyes. Maia laughed but otherwise ignored him; she went and shook George.

"Georgie!" she cooed. "Wake up!"

"Five more minutes, Mum," George sighed, expression so blissful and handsome, something funny settled in Maia's stomach. Didn't stop her, though; she bounced George against his mattress, and tickled him. With a grunt, he started upright, eyes at half-mast.

"Wha's goin' on?"

Maia held up two official certificates. "We got it!"

"Got what? George mumbled sleepily, kneading his eyes with the heel of his palm.

"_Permission_!" Maia grinned excitedly. "George, they're official licences from the British Quidditch Federation! Our applications for licences to use the team colours and logos were _accepted_!" George's eyes snapped open, suddenly alert, yawning subtly as he reached for the official licences.

"This one's for the First Aid kits," Maia said, handing one certificate to George. "It's got both our names on it, remember, _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ and _Pleiades Inc._—and this one is an umbrella licence permitting me to use team colours and logos for _Pleiades Inc. _products!" George's grin was worth more than words.

"Helps to have the head of the Federation in correspondence," he grinned, examining their joint licence.

"Absolutely," Maia beamed. "They're signed _personally_ by Violet! She said she was knocked out of the park by the product-samples I sent her, and she's even commissioned a wireless for her middle-daughter's _birthday_!"

"This is amazing—do we _have_ to sell _Cannons_ merchandise?" George grumbled, pouting at her.

"Yes! You'll make some little boy like Ron very happy," Maia grinned, climbing off George's bed. "Anyway, I thought we could go to Diagon Alley this morning to pick up fabric from Gladrag's so we can start putting together League First Aid envelopes—"

"It's a _quarter to six_!" George croaked, having picked up his alarm-clock.

"Yes," Maia said, gazing at him, waiting for more. "So?"

"So?! What the _hell_ are you doing up so early?"

"Seizing the day," she beamed. "Anyway, you two already have thirty-six letters downstairs. Want me to take them up to the attic or will you come down now to grab them?"

"Put 'em upstairs," George yawned, sitting on the edge of his bed; Maia realised he'd been shirtless the entire time. Exposed to his partial-nudity when they'd been at the Hobbit-hole and at breakfast-time, seeing George shirtless wasn't anything new to her, but Maia was always taken by how toned George was. With his sleepy grin, tousled hair and shirtless-ness, he was…_delicious_. She bit the inside of her cheek as she glanced at George.

When she had returned to the kitchen, another wave of deliveries had arrived; she spent five minutes separating them all, and popping up to the workshop to put the twins' orders safely out of Mrs Weasley's reach, she found Kreacher cleaning up the workshop. Back in the kitchen again, Maia pocketed further post for the twins, and made little labels with everyone's names on them, sticking them to the mantelpiece, where she separated wedges of post with knickknacks. She sat going through her post while she had a cup of tea, separating the letters she'd read into piles depending on what people were ordering or writing about; she read the letter from the _Witch Weekly _editor, then read through the magazine, smiling with delight at her beautiful full-page coloured advertisement. She received a note from the printer that the next three fairytales were ready to collect; and she got homework and essays back from Professors Sinistra and Vector; a copy of _The Practical Potioneer_ and _Transfiguration Today_, as per the suggestion of her respective teachers; letters commenting on the Dementor attack; and letters from two werewolf teenagers Remus had put Maia in contact with, having asked her to correspond with them to help expand their social ties.

A month ago, two months, nearly, she'd had Sirius. And Remus. That was it. Now she had pen-friends and contacts all over the country. She was a _political activist_ and an inventor, a published writer and illustrator, an entrepreneur. It was _weird_, putting everything into that context. She'd had no idea her life would change so dramatically in just two months… When Diane had died…she had _never_ expected her life would turn out like this.

In the lead-up to nine-o'clock, when most shops in Diagon Alley opened for the day, Maia showered, dressed, put together orders for the twins, and stored the advance-orders for fairytales in a safe place in her desk, before heading back downstairs to go through the post with pre-addressed envelopes to _Radio Rock Merchandise_; there were forty-seven total orders for _Radio Rock_ merchandise that day, and Maia had them wrapped up and sent off with full printed invoice by the time Sirius dropped downstairs, yawning. He did a double-take at the mantelpiece, now turned letter-organiser, and had fun going through the order-forms Maia had already filled.

"I'll go by Gringott's this morning, too," Maia said to him, tucking all of the money-orders in her clutch-purse. At the moment, and until necessity required other arrangements, all _Radio Rock_ financial transactions were carried out through her vault. Luckily she didn't have to actually go _to_ her family's vault; she talked to one of the goblins or, more usually, Bill. She teased him that he was her "accountant" and that he'd better not skim off the top!

"You're going to Diagon Alley?"

"We got the licences!" Maia said, and Sirius beamed.

"Maia, that's wonderful!" he grinned. "Does Ailith know?"

"No; she hasn't been here this morning," Maia frowned.

"She must still be getting ready for work," Sirius yawned, drawing several fan-letters toward him as he nursed a cup of tea. Maia glanced at him.

"Getting ready?"

"Yeah, Ales spent the night," Sirius said casually, laughing as he read someone's letter.

"Did she, then?" Maia smirked as she turned back to pay the delivery owl a Knut for the _Prophet_. So Ailith had spent the night… She had done so before, but always asked… They all knew about it. Had she 'spent the night' with _Sirius_? As Maia accepted several more letters and went into the pantry for Sirius' favourite jam, Ailith came downstairs. She just managed to catch Sirius and Ailith locked in a searing kiss that took _Maia's_ breath away. As Sirius murmured something in Ailith's ear, making her blush, Remus came into the kitchen, raising an eyebrow but not looking at all surprised; a smile flashed across his face as he clocked Maia, gaping, hidden in the pantry.

"Morning, everyone!" he smiled. "Maia…do you have that blackcurrant jam?"

"Er… Yeah," Maia said, reaching for another jar, and she smirked at Remus as Sirius cleared his throat and Ailith blushed. Counting in her head, Maia grinned.

"When the twins come down," she said to Sirius, as she gathered her wicker-basket, "tell them, I won the pool."

"What pool?"

"Just tell them, please? I've got to go," Maia said, smiling; Kreacher locked the front-door after her, and by ten o'clock, she was back, having accomplished everything she'd needed to in Diagon Alley. The twins ruefully handed over the contents of the pool on how long it would take Sirius and Ailith to get together, when she returned, and until lunch, when Mrs Weasley corralled everyone into helping decontaminate the drawing-room—Sirius had agreed with her that the job needed doing, and the word "Christmas" was mentioned again—Maia worked on sending out all the orders she could, all the while supervising Kreacher in the construction of First Aid envelopes in Quidditch League team colours, the backs stamped with the team name, the top flap embossed with the logo.

Maia had discovered the Protean Charm. In one of Tonks' N.E.W.T.-level textbooks, it had explained the charm's use: when the master copy of anything with the Protean Charm placed upon it was altered in any way, each copy would change to follow suit. Reminded of George's note-passing during their _Madam Primpernelle's_ class, trying to explain email and MSN to Ginny and realising, with a lurch, that she and the twins wouldn't be in the same classes come September, she'd had an _inkling_.

Magic opened many doors, but the lack of modern Muggle technology meant things like text-messages were a long time coming. But things like Concealment charms, disguising something as something else if the wrong eyes gazed upon it, Protean Charms and wholesale prices at the paper-mill/printer were marvellous things; she roped Hermione and Ginny in as testers, confiding her idea in them.

Matching pairs of diaries, bound with recycled leather dyed vibrant shades of the rainbow, concealed as plain school notebooks to adult eyes, with Protean Charms placed on each diary so that when one person wrote in either, both would show the message, perhaps with a feature that made the pages sparkle or glow in an eye-catching way when a message had been received; inter-classroom communication, disguised as a run-of-the-mill composition-book.

"Come on!" George called, poking his head round the TARDIS doors between workshop and parlour. "Mum needs us all in the drawing-room; there are _loads_ more Doxies than she thought—and she's found a nest of dead Puffskeins under the sofa."

"Lovely," Maia grimaced, thrown back to the early days of her residence in Number Twelve, bonding with Sirius over buckets of soapy water.

"What're you up to?" George asked curiously, pausing in the doorway, eyeing the coffee-table.

"New project," Maia murmured, running her stylus over her lips. "Two-way journals. Disguised from adult eyes."

"Very cool," George grinned. "We'll have to have a conference after Mum's whipped our hides raw in the drawing-room."

"Definitely," Maia said, setting her things down.

"Grab a hankie!" Mrs Weasley called, as soon as they entered the drawing-room, their conversation on Protean Charms and magical note-passing techniques, including how to curse things, like diaries, in case the wrong person tried to read them, ended quickly.

Everyone else had gathered in front of the first of three sets of very long, moth-eaten curtains, which were _buzzing_; everyone was wearing a cloth over their noses and mouths to protect from fumes, and opal, in a pair of Quidditch goggles, a frilly apron and two mismatched oven-gloves, was being spun around in a silver dish by Fred. She toppled out, grinning dazedly, and Maia started when something brushed against her bare ankle; Crookshanks, coming to inspect the labourers, and no doubt to see if he could discover anything edible. "Here you are, Doxycide. Sirius says you're familiar with it."

"Very," Maia nodded, accepting a black spray-bottle, remembering her first day with Sirius, going through the dining-room.

"I've never seen an infestation this bad!" Mrs Weasley sighed, gazing at the curtains. "Well, I've got some antidote here, just in case anybody's bitten, but I'd really rather I didn't have to use it. Ah, Kreacher, there you are."

"Madam Weasley asked for Kreacher's assistance?" Kreacher said inquisitively.

"Yes, we'll need a bit of help decontaminating this room," Mrs Weasley said, and her tone turned withering, "_What_ you've been doing here for the last ten years—"

"Kreacher, why don't you start going through the passages?" Maia suggested, interrupting, her voice muffled as she tied a handkerchief over her nose and mouth. "We didn't get to the ones around the drawing-room before."

"Yes, Mistress Maia," Kreacher smiled, hobbling away.

"You all ready to get started?" Sirius asked, as he meandered into the room, one hand in his pocket, the other cradling a glazed choux bun filled with mousse.

"I take it _you're_ not going to pick up a bottle and help," Maia smirked.

"I'm supervising, smart-arse," Sirius retorted, sighing as he took two Knuts out of his pocket to place on Opal's outstretched oven-glove.

"Where did you get that cake?" Ron asked, the visible half of his face looking slightly crestfallen.

"Tink made some up for you all for later," Sirius said, demolishing the last of the choux pastry in one large, indulgent bite, licking his fingers. "Methinks she's trying to displace Kreacher, by buying me through pastries. Opal, my glamorous assistant, you're to report to me if they're slacking off, yes?"

"Yep!" Opal chirped; Mrs Weasley rolled her eyes.

"Anyway, I thought I'd put these eggs in a safe place while you're cleaning," Sirius said, gesturing to the pretty built-in maple cabinet in the corner above the banquet table, which was filled with the most exquisite eggs in creation—_Fabergé_ would've been spitting with envy. "They're very fragile." Everyone but Mrs Weasley gathered around the banquet as Sirius removed the eggs from the cabinet, setting them carefully on the table before levitating them out of the room, so they could all examine the exquisite, near-priceless treasures. "My family were bastards—" Sirius took out another two Knuts—"the lot of them, but my great-grandfather was an incredibly wealthy wizard with a highly-acquisitive, very fashionable wife. This entire room was redecorated for her on their marriage—the eggs were a yearly gift at Easter. Prettiest pieces of art my family ever acquired."

"My family had lots, too," Maia said, and Sirius nodded, smiling.

"Yes, your grandmother was very famous for her collection," he smiled softly.

"Perhaps I can re-house them in here," Maia said thoughtfully, eyeing the drawing-room, _When it's redecorated_…

"Aren't these eggs custom-designed?" Hermione asked. "The Russian tsar, in the turn of the last century, he gave them to his wife, too, they were _stunning_!"

"Yes, every egg is custom-designed," Sirius said, lifting another out of the front of the middle glass shelf with his wand. "This one's new…" The size of a swan's egg, he closely examined a pale-pink lacquered egg decorated with exquisite tiny forget-me-nots at the base in hues of blues and lilac, with diamonds surrounding a little oval of ivory painted with a tiny portrait; the portrait was surrounded by what, on closer inspection, turned out to be a flattened snake embedded with flawless diamonds, almost _embracing_ a tiny badger at the bottom of the portrait, which stood on a tiny silver ribbon-styled plaque bearing an etched name and birth-date. "Maia…it's you."

"Me?"

"Yeah!" Sirius laughed. "He _must've _told them about you… Even if the de Lusignans were blood-traitors, they were one of the finest pureblood families left… They must've just been relieved he'd produced an heir, I suppose…"

"That's you as a baby, Maia?"

"Aw, look how _cute_ the little poppet is!"

"You must've been about a year old in that portrait," Mrs Weasley said, leaning over Ginny's shoulder to look, smiling warmly.

"A year?" Maia asked, glancing at Sirius. If she had been a year old in the portrait, then…then her grandparents must have received the egg around the time of her father's death…

"They _would_ have been happy to hear their favourite had produced an heir," Sirius said again, with emphasis. "Especially if he'd already died before they found out." Harry looked slightly confused.

"Who are you talking about?"

"My younger-brother, Regulus," Sirius said. "Maia's dad."

"I didn't know you had a brother."

"I haven't, not for a _very_ long time," Sirius said, shrugging. While Sirius chatted with Harry about Regulus, showing him the family-tree, Mrs Weasley ordered the others over to the windows.

"—oh, and Sirius—there's something in the writing-desk, I expect it's a Boggart but I thought we could have Alastor take a look at it first," Mrs Weasley called.

"Knowing my mother, it could be something much nastier," Sirius said darkly.

"You should show Harry your mother's portrait," Maia smirked. "Might explain why you left home at sixteen…" While Sirius talked about how he'd run away to the Potters' at sixteen, then found his own place a year later and spent Sunday-lunches with his best-friend and his parents, everyone stationed themselves in front of the first set of curtains, ready for the attack.

"Now, when I say the word, start spraying immediately, because they'll all come flying out."

"I'm the bucket-girl!" Opal chirped, grunting as she struggled to drag over two wooden buckets. "I'll collect the Doxies."

"Alright, Opal, you can collect the paralysed Doxies," Mrs Weasley said gently. "Just be sure you only go when I tell you to, I don't want you getting bitten—" She broke off, and Fred snorted.

"Maia, did you know…?" While they sprayed the first set of curtains Opal chatted happily about the thank-you letter she had received from Chummy's lot for having them to play. Her excitement over having _friends_ was palpable.

"Fred! What _are _you _doing_?!" Mrs Weasley demanded. "Spray that at once and throw it away!"

"Right-o!" Fred said brightly, dousing the Doxy he had pinched between thumb and forefinger with Doxycide, so that it fainted. He pocketed it, when Mrs Weasley's back was turned, and Harry, who'd watched him do so, was treated to a whispered discussion with the twins about their Skiving Snackboxes. Keeping an eye on their mother for them while the twins explained about the problems they'd been having with their Puking Pastilles, Maia continued the de-Doxying of the curtains, which took all of the afternoon, by which time Opal had become bored, and retreated to the playroom. At the end of it, the curtains hung limp, sodden; Kreacher, who had been heard whistling while he scrubbed the hidden passages, came to help take the curtains down and tear up the dusty, threadbare carpet. Making the most of Mrs Weasley's distraction while trying to get a tapestry off the wall, George made off with a handful of paralyzed Doxies and a silver dish of their black eggs, which Crookshanks had been sniffing at curiously. He returned with Opal, who proposed a game of hide-and-seek, as she had been "scoping out" the good hiding-places, which meant Sirius had told her exactly where the best places were. Apparently, he'd had a lot of experience playing hide-and-seek with his family-members…without them realising they were playing.

" _Not there_!" Sirius suddenly shouted, and Opal froze, about to hop into a tall corner-cabinet of shining maple wood. Opal glanced uncertainly at Sirius, whose expression was surprised, intrigued.

"Why not?" Opal asked quietly, glancing into the cabinet, which was completely empty, and reminded Maia slightly of a panelled teleportation pod.

"Because that's a Vanishing Cabinet," Sirius said curiously, gently guiding Opal away from the cabinet by the hand, closing the door.

"A what?" Maia asked curiously; it looked pretty solid to her.

"During Voldemort's time, Vanishing Cabinets became the mode," Sirius said, his expression inscrutable as he eyed the cabinet. "You could step into one, and it would transport you to its twin, which could be anywhere. You see the appeal—the Death Eaters come to call, you slip into the Cabinet and disappear until they leave. Very convenient… I wonder when they got this… It wasn't here when I lived here."

"How does it work?" Maia asked curiously, approaching the cabinet. "Hold on! Wait one minute—it doesn't go to _Narnia_, does it?!" She gaped at Sirius; Hermione burst out laughing.

"Is it bigger on the inside?" Opal asked, sincerely curious as she tentatively approached the cabinet, latching on to Sirius' trouser-leg, and the others laughed at her reference to the TARDIS.

"I wonder where it goes to," Sirius said, shrugging. "Perhaps the Malfoy manor." At this, the twins, Ron and Harry all exchanged a significant look; an identical grin that shouted "EVIL THOUGHTS" spread across their faces. Sirius raised an eyebrow idly. "Don't even think about it!"

"Oh, come on!"

"You don't even know what we were about to do!"

"Fred, George, I have eighteen years' more experience than you in mischief-making," Sirius smirked. "You are _not_ going to slip into Malfoy Manor and render it uninhabitable with a portable swamp, or put Bulbadox Powder in Lucius Malfoy's knickers, or stick his son to the ceiling with a Permanent Sticking Charm."

"Wow," Fred said, raising his eyebrows.

"D'you know Legilimensy?" George asked, canting his head thoughtfully. Sirius chuckled.

"What about just a stink-pellet?"

"—or the dead Puffskeins, so they spend _forever_ searching for the smell—"

"Especially as they have no house-elf to look _for them_," Hermione smirked, completely satisfied.

"Well, no-one use the cabinet, at least until we can figure out where it goes," Sirius said, shutting the door gently.

"Why don't we just hop in and we can figure it out," Fred said, grinning.

"Nope," Sirius said, smiling. "We don't know if it's even functional, and if the sister-cabinet is damaged…"

"Easily sorted," George said, eyeing the cabinet shrewdly. "And, hey, Maia wanted to know how they work? We can strip it."

"So…these cabinets…they can transport people from one location to another, instantly?" she asked curiously, as she and George paused to take a Butterbeer break.

"Yep. People, animals, _stuff_," George confirmed. Maia licked her lips thoughtfully, tasting the Butterbeer and a hint of sweat from all their efforts this afternoon.

"And it doesn't lose its integrity?"

"Nope. Why?"

"Why don't people use them more often, for different purposes?" she asked curiously.

"Like what?" Maia shrugged, but she found the idea of the Vanishing Cabinet fascinating—so fascinating, in fact, she couldn't get them off her mind. For a little while, something had niggled at her; when she went to Hogwarts, how would she and Sirius communicate, without their letters being intercepted? She loved her conversations with him, and didn't want to suffer the inability to send him incredibly long letters while she was at school. As Mad-Eye said gruffly, codes could be broken, letters read and resealed without leaving signs of being intercepted. Something about the _instant_ nature of emails lingered, and she wondered, helping take down the last curtain, whether something could be created, not a cabinet, but something with similar Vanishing qualities.

"I think we'll tackle _those_ in the morning," Mrs Weasley said, pointing at the glass-fronted cabinets Opal had a No Touching rule over, filled with things the twins had tested their Dark-detecting little glass Sneakoscope on.

"Maybe Kreacher can get the tapestries off," Maia said thoughtfully, gazing at her own name in glinting golden thread at the very _bottom_ of the Black family-tree, the same generational line as a boy named Draco Malfoy, and where Nymphodora Tonks should have been embroidered beneath her mother Andromeda's burn-mark between her sisters Bellatrix and Narcissa.

"Remove the tree, Mistress?" Kreacher croaked, his eyes widening, as he came to call them to dinner. "Seven centuries it's been in the family."

"You can tell," Maia sighed, examining the ancient tapestry. "Maybe we could bung it up in the attic…"

"As Mistress Maia desires," Kreacher smiled. "Kreacher will remove the tapestry."

"All of them, actually, if you can manage it," Maia said, glancing at the others. "Thanks, Kreacher."

"I can't believe your family's ancestry is documented back _seven centuries_," Hermione said, smiling, as they washed their hands and faces in the downstairs-cloakroom.

"I know. In the Muggle world that'd put me on par with a king or tsar," Maia said, chuckling. "Most royal families don't even have lineages that continuous."

"It's a shame Sirius hated his family so much," Hermione said sadly.

"Yeah. I can't imagine disowning my child," Maia said softly. "I think it gets to Sirius more than he lets on, that he was blasted off the tapestry." She frowned. "I don't even know his birthday."

"Whose?"

"Sirius'."

"No, I don't know it, either," Hermione said. But Maia was mulling the details of something she'd just thought of, a project she could work on until Christmas… A gift for her uncle.

The evening had been spent doing homework, checking potions in the attic, and replying to letters; the twins had some success with the Doxy eggs and venom in their Skiving Snackbox sweets; and Maia had over three-hundred orders for fairytales since her change to the _Witch Weekly _advertisement. She had also received requests for further information on her patented pocket-wireless, so she had been working on photographing different designs—now including Quidditch League colours—to put into a small owl-order catalogue she intended to send to everyone who had inquired. The twins were considering stocking the wirelesses, when they ever found premises; Maia had produced their _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ acid forget-me-not pocket-wireless, with five others for the twins to put in their owl-order catalogue to see how much interest there was in them.

* * *

><p>First thing in the morning, she visited the printer's, received her order of a thousand more badges for <em>Radio Rock<em>; the posters she had designed; the twins' orders of more packaging; and the next five fairytales that had finished printing and had been bound; and a small poster featuring a few of the wireless designs.

"'Lo, Maia," Mal grinned lazily, propping a stack of records on his tiny counter, behind which he was cloistered by a half-dozen cardboard boxes full of new records.

"Hello, Mal," Maia smiled. "I've got the poster!"

"Bring it over here!" Mal grinned, and Maia climbed over two boxes, handing over the poster.

"I really appreciate this, Mal," she said earnestly, smiling, because she had clocked the _Radio Rock_ poster pasted to the door over old record posters, showing off the _Radio Rock_ t-shirts and other merchandise.

"Are you kidding?" Mal grinned. "I've had quadruple the amount of traffic in here this summer than last, ever since _Radio Rock_ started up—I've even had to start stocking Muggle records, there's so much interest."

"That's great," Maia beamed. "I'm glad."

"Hey, give this to the Fugitive for me," Mal said, reaching for a sealed envelope on his corkboard.

"Okay," Maia smiled, tucking the envelope into her bag. Mal winked.

"Anyway, this poster…where to put it…?" Maia fell into place helping Mal empty a space to put the poster, right on the back of the till, so everyone who came in had to see it. Mal sent her off with several brand-new records from several bands who were immensely popular for Sirius to play.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review!


	31. Chapter 31

**A.N.**: What some of you have been waiting for. Action. Well, action-y type stuff. Not duelling; but important stuff happens…

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_31_

* * *

><p>When she returned to Grimmauld Place, it was to find Opal in a fit of excitement—"I'm going to the <em>zoo<em>!"

"Really?"

"Whitsnape Zoo!" Opal cried delightedly, bursting with enthusiasm.

"I think you mean Whi_p_sna_de_ Zoo," Maia smiled.

"We're going to have a picnic!" Opal cried, clapping her hands. "I'm going to see the giraffes and the penguins!" Jules, who was smiling warmly at his daughter, chuckled.

"We'd better go," he said, "or your cousins will have stolen the leopard-cubs before we can get there."

"Am I allowed an elephant?" Opal asked.

"We couldn't afford to feed it."

"A mini hippopot-at-at-amus?"

"A pygmy hippo?" Maia smiled, gazing down at Opal as she whirled around; she wore a very pretty dress Maia had sewn for her; it had several different printed cottons prettily pieced together with a high empire waist, reaching a widening hem, little puff sleeves and a placket of tiny yellow buttons on the back, vibrant against the floral cotton, with a small pinafore worn over the top in contrasting patterned cottons. She wore a pair of silver-glitter jelly sandals (staples for any child under seven on their summer-holiday!) with her curly hair piled into two sloppy buns.

"Yes. _Your_ Patronus is a hippo!" Opal said, turning to beam at Maia delightedly. "Daddy, Maia's Patronus is a hippo, I _saw it_."

"That's what I've heard," Jules smiled. "Come here, put some sun-cream on. Don't want you to burn."

"That's alright," Opal said, eyeing the blue plastic bottle of sun-cream. "Fred and George _invented_ something to get rid of sun-burns. They're called First Aid kits." Jules chuckled.

"C'mere, you!" He lunged for his daughter before she could dart away from him. She giggled, then writhed and squirmed, her face a picture as Jules rubbed sun-cream all over her.

"It's not nice-smelling, Daddy!"

"Yes, but you'll be crying if you get burned," Jules remarked.

"Can Maia come with us? She'll like the lions," Opal said, beaming. Watching _The Lion King_ with the other were-babies the other night, Maia and Opal (and Hermione, though she had admitted it only blushingly) had been word-perfect on every single song. Maia's unabashed infatuation with Mufasa had the twins in giggles for a half-hour.

"I'm afraid I can't come, Ope," Maia said, pretending to sigh and pout regretfully. "I've got a flagellation to go to in the drawing-room." Jules laughed, grinning.

"Oh," Opal frowned thoughtfully. She shot a dazzling smile. "Have fun!"

"I'd trade a day cleaning the drawing-room with a day at the zoo with five kids under ten," Jules said.

"Enjoy," Maia smirked. "Here, Ope…" She pulled out her purse, in which she still kept pounds sterling, or "Queen's money", as Sirius called it, just in case, and she pulled out a £5 note. "Buy yourself something nice in the gift-shop."

Opal gasped delightedly, eyes popping. "_Thanks_!"

"Give it to your dad for safekeeping," Maia said, and Jules winked subtly as he pocketed the money. Jules spent a lot of time at work, so they didn't see much of him, but he always seemed taken aback and delighted by the way everyone in Grimmauld Place treated his little werewolf daughter. But Opal was _beloved_ around here.

"Thanks, Maia," he said softly.

"Have a good day," Maia smiled. "Ope, behave for your daddy."

"I will," Opal beamed. Only a few moments later, they had gone, Opal chatting happily about the animals she wanted to visit, excited to see her cousins, rhapsodising over some of Maia's food that Kreacher had put in a picnic-basket for them.

Maia put the records from Mal and the letter for 'The Figitive' in the studio for Sirius, put everything from the printer's in the workshop, and made her way down to the drawing-room.

"Ah, there you are, Maia dear," Mrs Weasley said, glancing over as Maia entered the room. "Sirius said you'd gone to Diagon Alley. I'm very glad _you're_ not wasting away your holiday in bed." The twins shot their mother a very dirty look.

"Fred's had two hours' sleep," George muttered, as Maia joined him, accepting the dragon-hide gloves he offered. "She came in shouting at us—apparently, Dad slipped up and told her Percy's been ignoring him at work."

"Oh dear," Maia sighed. "Where's Sirius?"

"Playing with those eggs," Fred smirked, snapping on his own gloves.

"Apparently, his mum never even let him near the cabinet when he was a kid," George smiled.

"Who does that remind you of?" Fred muttered, glaring at his mother before yawning widely.

"As soon as your mum's distracted, why don't you go back to bed?" Maia suggested quietly, frowning concernedly at Fred; he looked awful.

"Can't. We've got a very delicate potion on the go," Fred yawned again.

"Well, at least let George keep an eye on it; you're so tired you're bound to make a mistake," Maia said, her voice gentle but firm. Her gaze flitting to Mrs Weasley, instructing Ginny and Hermione what needed doing, she added darkly, "Because we won't be able to come up with an excuse good enough if you're killed by an exploding cauldron." Fred yawned, and nodded.

"Right you are, Maia," he sighed tiredly. "I'll go and have a kip after lunch."

They worked steadily through to one o'clock, when Fred slinked off as Mrs Weasley shepherded them downstairs for lunch, and to get away from the smell of wax, marble-cleanser and fresh paint. Kreacher had managed, Mrs Weasley didn't know how, what with the _Permanent_ Sticking Charm on them, to remove the ancient tapestries from the walls, storing them all in the attic; he had helped them strip the grubby wallpaper, and the Doxy-gnawed upholstery from furniture, which Cedric and Ginny then had to wash and polish, and Hermione brought in Crookshanks, Borgia, Hedwig and Cedric's owl Bloduewedd to devour a small colony of spiders the size of saucers that had taken up residence in the sideboard. Ron had disappeared to make a cup of tea and only came back an hour and a half later. The furniture was removed, the walls stripped, the floor polished beautifully and the window-frames repainted; they'd set up Maia's wireless on the treated mantelpiece, and Sirius was keeping them in upbeat music to slave away to.

Even if he and Fred hadn't joined S.P.E.W., George muttered that he'd join anyway, now that he knew what it felt like to spend two hours on his hands and knees, scrubbing and waxing the parquet floor without magic. Hermione was delighted George appreciated what a rotten, thankless existence some house-elves led, and wondered over lunch whether a sponsored-scrub of Gryffindor Tower might be worth their while to raise funds and awareness for S.P.E.W.

Maia thought Ron getting a brain-freeze over homemade strawberry ice-cream was exactly what he deserved for muttering to Hermione that he'd "sponsor you to shut up about S.P.E.W."

* * *

><p>After lunch, when Jack arrived to take over for his turn in the studio, Sirius joined them in the drawing-room to help the others go through the contents of the two glass-fronted cabinets, while Maia reupholstered the furniture with beautiful dusky rose-pink silk she had picked out to match the wallpaper, and George went through folders of all Maia's photographs to pick out which ones should be printed and framed and put on the walls with other artwork.<p>

A selection of rusty daggers; claws; a coil of snakeskin; tarnished silver boxes engraved with foreign languages and a crystal bottle of blood with an opal stopper were thrown unceremoniously into a sack to bin.

"—I mean… _blood_?! Why?" Maia blurted, grimacing. "Is it that morbid Victorian tradition of preserving a loved-one's hair in jewellery, just more extreme? And disgusting?"

"I've no idea," Sirius said, shaking his head. "Never asked. I was always afraid they'd tell me it was all that remained of my _real_ parents." Everyone laughed.

Jules may have called it "cleaning", but emptying the cabinets felt more akin to waging war; the contents fought back, reluctant to leave the dusty glass shelves. Sirius sustained a nasty bite from a silver snuffbox; within seconds, his hand had developed an unpleasant, crusty covering, like a tough brown glove. He terrorised Ginny with it, before examining his hand curiously.

"It's okay," he assured Maia, smiling easily, tapping his wand lightly to his hand, restoring normalcy. "Must be Wartcap Powder in there." Despite Hermione's disapproving expression, Sirius helped George relocate the powder from the snuffbox into a vial from George's pocket. The snuffbox went straight into the bin. "There you are; see what you can do with that."

"Thanks, mate," George grinned.

"Just _don't_ put the vial in your pocket—if the lid came off…!" Sirius said quickly, and George shot Maia a cheeky grin as the others laughed. He popped upstairs, reporting back ten minutes later, to slam shut a music-box that emitted a faintly sinister, tinkling tune that had them curiously weak and sleepy; the musical-box was promptly binned, and George smirked at Maia as he helped turn the last chair upright after Maia had secured the freshly-padded and upholstered seat.

"Fred's up in the parlour, fast asleep on the sofa, _clutching_ the Harry-dolly, and yes, I've got pictures," he grinned, and Maia laughed.

"That and the photo of you in a moustache and a strip of tartan, we've got _prime_ Christmas-card material," she smiled, rubbing her hands together eagerly.

"We've just got to get some incriminating evidence against the others now," George said thoughtfully, gazing at his younger-brother and sister. "Ginny'll be easy, just get her in the morning; she _hates_ people seeing her without makeup. Is that natural?"

"For a fourteen-year-old girl?" Maia said. "Very."

"I saw the deliveries from the printer's," George smiled. "Really nice of him to discount all our orders."

"Customer loyalty," Maia smiled.

"It's strange, you know," George said, as he helped her reupholster the banquet seat. "Fred and I thought it'd be a waste of our summer, coming to stay here. Didn't think we'd benefit so madly from it."

"Yeah," Maia agreed with a heavy sigh, though she smiled, "I feel the same way. Life does have a way of slapping you in the face sometimes."

"Yeah," George said softly, chuckling at something. Maia shot him an inquisitive look, but he just smiled, eyes twinkling at her.

"Maia—George—watch!" Sirius called, and they glanced up, jumping to their feet as something like a sinister pair of many-legged tweezers scuttled over to them, launching itself at Maia's ankle, trying to puncture the skin. George grabbed it, and Sirius smashed it with a heavy leather-bound tome entitled _Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy_.

"Okay, I just want to go on record as saying, our family's fetish for torture-devices? _Wrong!_" Maia said, rubbing her foot. Sirius let out his rich, bark-like laugh.

"'Fetish for torture-devices'," he chuckled. "I like that!" The silver tweezers were put in the bin-bag; Maia contemplated trading her sandals for Docs.

"Hey, look!" Harry said, drawing their attention to the second glass-fronted cabinet: the first stood facing the nearest window, glittering and shining from the wash and polish Hermione and Neville had helped Kreacher give it. But the other was only half-emptied, an Order of Merlin, an ancient ring and several other oddments still dusty on the shelves amongst gruesome jawbones, dusty books, and the thing that had caught Harry's eye, a shallow basin of stone, Ancient Runes etched around the rim.

"That's a Pensieve!" Hermione said curiously.

"Yeah, but it's empty," Harry said, setting the basin on the floor.

"What's a Pensieve?" Maia asked.

"You can put memories in it," Harry said, before Hermione could open her mouth and give a dictionary-definition. "And then you can enter the memories to watch. Dumbledore's got one."

"Yeah, I remember seeing it in his office," George said, peering closely at the Pensieve.

"But I don't remember ever seeing one in my father's office," Sirius frowned. "He'd have no use for it; Pensieves are for great wizards like Dumbledore. And they're costly; my father was always tight, he'd never have bought anything he wouldn't use on a daily basis. I don't ever remember this in here… This is new, too…" He frowned, pulling a small trinket-box, about the size of Maia's wirelesses, out of the cabinet, behind where the Pensieve had rested. It was of beautiful polished woods in a geometric mosaic-pattern, with a little golden clasp.

"Hang on!" Hermione said, making Sirius pause halfway toward opening the catch. She reached into the cabinet. "There's a letter…it's addressed to…Professor _Dumbledore_?"

Sirius laughed, then he frowned at her. "You're _serious_?" Hermione passed him the dusty, aged envelope. "Well, this can't be from anyone in _my_ family! They all thought Dumbledore was a blood traitor of the highest order!"

"What does it say?"

"Open it!"

"What's in the box?!"

Sirius tucked the letter into his breast-pocket, earning a disappointed, "Aw!" and he chuckled as he opened the little box. As one, everyone drew in closer to look at the contents.

"Is that it?" Ron asked, looking disappointed. "A broken locket, a cracked ring and a couple of vials of potion?" Sirius, his expression comical, pulled a _fang_ out of the lid of the box.

"Sirius, be careful!" Harry half-shouted suddenly, making several of them jump. "Sorry—Sirius, that's…that's a _basilisk_ fang!"

"Are… You're sure, Harry?" Sirius frowned, gazing at the fang; it was little longer than Maia's hand, but shone.

"Trust me, I had one plunged into my arm once," Harry said grimly, rubbing his forearm. "I remember the shape—that must've come from a young basilisk, though. The fangs on the one in the Chamber of Secrets were a foot long." Sirius carefully tucked the fang in a length of velvet and back into the box-lid.

"This isn't _potion_," Hermione said, examining the vials of swirling silvery substance, neither liquid nor gas.

"It's _memory_," Harry said softly. "It's the same stuff as in Dumbledore's Pensieve."

"Alright, who'd leave vials of memory, a broken locket, an old ring and a _basilisk fang_ in a box next to a Pensieve and a letter to Dumbledore?" Ron asked the room in general, rather incredulously. As the doorbell rang, Sirius fixed them with a stern look, climbed off the floor and left the room. As soon as his footsteps sounded on the stairs, everyone glanced at the vials, then each other; Ginny darted to close the door, and George pushed the Pensieve in front of Harry.

"Only one way to find out who they're from, little bro!" he grinned. "How does it work, Harry?"

"Er…I'm not sure…that this is such a good idea," Cedric said uncertainly, watching Harry pull the stopper out of the first vial.

"We don't know what's in those memories," Hermione added apprehensively.

"Hopefully something dishy!" George grinned. "Come on, aren't you two sick of being kept in the dark?" Hermione bit her lip; Cedric seemed to be waging some kind of internal battle. He often got that look, his own better judgement warring with the twins' coaxing to be a little bolder, devil-may-care…not such a _good boy_. He missed out on a lot of their fun, otherwise.

"Alright," Cedric sighed.

"But if anything happens," Ron added, "we're blaming you."

"Don't worry; Mum will anyway." Harry emptied the vial into the Pensieve, making his face glow with silvery light like that of a Patronus.

"What do we do now?" Ron breathed.

"Okay, if you just…follow me," Harry said, lowering his face to the surface after glancing around at them all. As soon as he was almost dousing his face in the silvery substance…he disappeared.

"Er…" Ron said uncertainly, blinking. "Hermione, you next?" Hermione rolled her eyes, but followed suit; emboldened by his friends, Ron went next; everyone took turns, Maia following Neville.

"See you on the other side," George grinned, before she lowered her face; she saw a tiny square of blackness grow larger, then she was falling through it, landing soundlessly beside Ginny.

* * *

><p>"Er…" Ron said, glancing around; though they could see each other perfectly clearly, they were surrounded by impenetrable darkness. As George landed soundlessly beside Maia, followed by Cedric, the memory seemed to settle, and an eerie green glow emanated from beside Harry; they seemed to be on some kind of a small island, and a basin was filled with an eerily-glowing potion.<p>

"Look!" Hermione said, pointing; her voice echoed in the silence. Everyone gazed in the direction she was pointing; an orb of light had appeared, moving in a slow arc some metres above them.

"Are we… We're in a cave," Ron breathed.

"I wonder where that light came from," Neville said on a whisper; he sounded as if he regretted having followed them into the Pensieve.

"Reckon we're about to find out," Ron said. "Look, there's a boat!"

"It must be an underground lake," Maia murmured.

"I don't like this," Ginny whispered. "Do you feel…?"

"Yeah," Maia murmured, because she did feel the eerie prickling of dread making the hair on the back of her neck raise; she shivered, though she couldn't feel the chill of the underground lake.

"This feels wrong," Cedric said softly. Maia watched, dread mounting, as the little boat Hermione had spied came closer. The boat was large enough now, the floating light near enough above their heads, to see the passengers.

"Is that—?" Hermione's breath caught. In billowing robes, holding a wand aloft was a tall, slender man. But no man as Maia would ever recognise one; his eyes had a reddish gleam, and there was something reptilian about the slant of his pupils, and…the flatness of his nose. Dark hair and long, spindly fingers completed the image, and Maia felt an inexplicable wave of dread and unquenchable hatred flood her.

"Yeah," Harry said hoarsely. "Lord Voldemort." Everyone but Harry and Maia shuddered; Maia was too distracted by the second figure in the boat.

"Look…it's…_Kreacher_?" she said, stunned. It _was_ Kreacher, younger by far than she'd last seen him, whistling in the drawing-room, and he was _terrified_. She could practically taste his fear. As she watched the little boat come closer, she frowned, noticing that things kept softly bumping into the prow, glimpses of white with the rippling wake of the boat's progress.

"Is there something in the water?" she breathed, wishing she hadn't asked, because she'd just seen…a _hand_… '_The Dead Marshes, yes, yes, that is their name…all dead, all rotten…_'

"I really don't like this," Ginny whispered.

"This must be Kreacher's memory," Hermione said softly.

"At least we know he gets out of here," George said, and, glancing at him, Maia realised he was right; whatever happened in this memory, Kreacher was still alive. That gave her a burst of warmth that steadied her shaking hands, fortifying her confidence. But it was still eerie, the silence, the dark, the glow of the potion… The boat docked at the island, and, in complete silence, Lord Voldemort climbed out of the boat, billowing robes sweeping around him. Looking like he could barely put one foot in front of the other, Kreacher followed.

Lord Voldemort waved his hand, and a goblet appeared in thin air.

"Drink the potion." The high, cold voice echoed; it surprised her. Maia had expected a hiss. Long fingers trembling, Kreacher took hold of the goblet. As he brought it, full of potion, to his lips, Maia stifled the urge to know it out of his hands…but this was a memory…it had already happened…

One goblet, two… Kreacher started begging to make it stop. A third goblet, a fourth, he screamed for Regulus, for Mistress Black, for Miss Bella and Miss Cissy…he sobbed. Cold, almost…studious, Lord Voldemort watched Kreacer, who didn't seem able to stop himself filling another goblet, as if he was compelled to do so despite his incapacitated mind; he was screaming for Regulus, choking on sobs, it was…awful, to stand there, watching it happen, incapable of doing anything to stop it, to help.

When no more potion remained, Voldemort slipped a hand inside his robes. He withdrew…the locket they had seen in the box. Only, now it was sealed, and an emerald-inlaid _S_ on the front glittered eerily. Voldemort's eyes seemed to flash scarlet for a second…before he dropped it in the basin. He flicked his wand, and the basin refilled itself with potion. Disregarding the screaming house-elf at his feet entirely, Voldemort swept over to the boat, climbed in, and sailed away…leaving Kreacher sobbing, croaking softly for "_Water_!"

"He…_left_," Hermione gasped, horrified, tears shining on her cheeks.

"Must've thought house-elves were disposable," Ron said gruffly, clearing his throat.

"Oh no…" Ginny whispered; she was watching Kreacher. Maia watched him crawl to the water's edge, fear and foreboding gripping her. The water… Things in the water…

Kreacher lowered his head to the water, gulping down several mouthfuls…

Nerves stretched, everyone jumped as a hand plunged out of the water, grabbing him. A pale, clammy, glistening, _dead_ hand. As more thrust out of the water, dragging Kreacher down, into the churning blackness, the light extinguished. The sounds were almost worse than watching; they all frowned, bemused, when the darkness melted away.

"Okay, what the _hell_—?"

"He got away," George croaked; he looked very pale.

"Where are we now?" Neville asked; he had had his hands over his eyes since Voldemort sailed away from the island. Another scene, another _memory_, replaced the first; this one was fire-lit, and utterly familiar. Warmth, love, comfort exuded every inch of the little parlour with deep-set round windows.

"It's the Hobbit-hole," she said hoarsely, because two figures had emerged as the memory settled. On, dark-haired, slim, good-looking but less-handsome than his elder-brother was…her father. Regulus. He looked so _young_.

The second figure, reclined in a familiar armchair, gazed at him; Maia's mother. Fair-haired with eyes the size of saucers, of a rich, deep navy, she was _beautiful_. She looked thin, and tired, but she gazed at Regulus with undisguised love. Her eyes widened as Regulus said something unheard, the rest of the memory drifting into place. A beautiful little baby sat on a blanket in front of the fire, dressed in a soft pale-pink onesie, sucking on a dummy and playing with a _Snitch_.

"A Horcrux?" Balian asked, staring at Regulus. Maia gazed at her, memorising everything about her.

"What's a—?" Ron began, but was hushed by Hermione instantly.

"It's…part of his soul," Regulus said quietly, sighing softly. He sat down on the floor, one leg outstretched, his arm draped over it, his other knee bent; he gently stroked his finger on the baby's arm, making her glance around; her face dimpled with recognition, and she offered him the Snitch. Maia's mother rubbed her face tiredly.

"You'll have to explain," she said.

"When you commit murder, your own soul is ripped as a result," Regulus said sadly, his eyes on the baby. "If you know the necessary Dark magic, you can bind the piece of your soul into an inanimate object."

"But why would you _do_ something like that?" Balian breathed, horrified. Her features turned thoughtful; there was a lot more going on behind those incredible eyes than showed in her expression. "You'd never die."

"No," Regulus said softly, eyes on his daughter while she patted her tiny palm to his cheek, smiling; he kissed her palm several times, smiling, making the baby squirm with delight and laugh softly. "As long as the Horcrux remained secret, undamaged, you would still be able to exist…even if…even if we were to use the Avada Kedavra curse on him tomorrow, with this Horcrux, he could return."

"How?"

"The sliver of soul preserved, the Horcrux, would need a strong emotional bond…" Regulus shrugged slightly. "In my reading, that's all I could decipher…perhaps the Horcrux gains strength from the bond, until it's powerful enough to…"

"Leave," Ginny whispered. Maia glanced at her; she was gazing at Regulus with wide eyes.

"So that's his secret," Balian said softly. "Horcruxes."

"Mm… Not Hallows," Regulus said, and he shot an ironic little smile at Balian, who smiled and rolled her eyes. _Hallows_?

"I prefer the Peverell methods of conquering death to Voldemort's," Balian frowned, her expression suddenly again very thoughtful, not noticing Regulus stifle a slight wince. "Horcruxes? Horcruxes. I've never even _heard_ of them."

"Well, my family's library isn't quite up to the high standards of your father's," Regulus sighed.

"And you think, this locket Kreacher told you about, it's his Horcrux?" Balian said, glancing at Regulus, who was now playing with the baby and the Snitch.

"The…the _precautions_ he used to safeguard it," Regulus said, "and from what he let slip…I don't think he'd have gone to all that trouble if it wasn't something incredibly important to him… He left Kreacher to die there… No-one to ever know his secret."

"How did Kreacher escape?" Balian asked. Regulus sniffed, looking upset.

"I'd told him to do as the Dark Lord bid him…then come home," he said hoarsely, and Balian nodded.

"Is he alright?" she asked gently. Regulus hung his head, shaking it slightly, a tear rolling down his cheek.

"I told him to hide…not to leave the house," he said hoarsely, wiping his face roughly. His voice cracked when he exclaimed, "Inferi, Balian! An entire _lake_ full of Inferi!" A few moments' silence passed, Balian looking very upset, Regulus playing tearfully, smiling, with the baby. _Inferi_?

"Why tell me all of this?" Balian asked, gazing thoughtfully at Regulus.

Regulus glanced up, his expression drenched with adoration—and anguish. "I tell you everything." Her expression incredibly sad, Balian nodded. "The only other person I could thing to tell—" Regulus broke off, glancing at the baby. After a moment, he cleared his throat softly, saying nervously, "Have you… Have you seen him, recently?"

"I've seen him," Balian said gently. "He's a godfather now." Regulus smiled softly to himself. "A little boy. Harry, they named him."

Regulus smiled again, eyes on the baby. "He'd be wasted on girls."

"I don't know," Balian smiled. She cooed at her daughter, "Someone's Uncle Padfoot's best girl, isn't she!"

"The present he gave her, on her birthday," Regulus said softly. "He did that, even though he doesn't know…"

"He's a good man," Balian said softly, smiling. "And a great friend."

"He always said I was an idiot to believe in our parents' pureblood traditions… I know exactly what he'd say if I told him…well…you know…"

"Sirius would never say 'I told you so'," Balian smiled, her eyes glittering with humour. "Because he wouldn't think it _nearly_ strong enough!" Regulus chuckled sadly.

"He was right though, all this time… He guessed what they were willing to do…what they _enjoy_ doing…"

"I think he'd be proud you actually recognise that what they're doing is wrong," Balian said softly. "Regulus…_please_ consider what I said…" Regulus smiled wistfully.

"I can't… I can't endanger the two of you that way. You, _her_…Kreacher, my parents, _Sirius_… I know they almost got him a few weeks ago," he murmured, eyes widening.

"After all this time… Regulus, I'd hate to think something might happen…and you'd never have cleared the air with him."

"He wouldn't believe me," Regulus said hoarsely. "Not now… The lines have been drawn…and he probably always knew I'd choose the wrong side and come to regret it."

"But just imagine if you _did_, Regulus! You've told me what it was like having him as a big-brother when you were little. Can't you imagine it? Big family Christmases, _babies_…"

Smiling tremulously, Regulus said hoarsely, "I daren't imagine it." He gazed at Balian, almost…heartbroken. "Even if the Order won this war, I'd still be parted from you. Death or Azkaban is all I deserve after the things I've…the things I've watched happen, and done nothing…" He broke off, clamping his eyes shut. He let out a shaky breath, opening his eyes, and stroked a hand over the baby's fine hair, down her little back, as if giving her the comfort he needed. Gazing from the baby to Balian, Regulus whispered, "What right do I have now to my own family, when I've seen so many destroyed?"

Maia wiped her eyes as Balian crept onto the floor beside Regulus. They cuddled up close, the baby resting against Regulus' thigh, playing with the silver Snitch on her blanket. If not for the topic of conversation…the picture was almost perfect. Maia couldn't believe how _young_ they were. And how handsome Regulus looked, just sitting beside extraordinarily pretty Balian, silently consoling and comforting each other.

"When do you have to go?" Balian whispered, tucked up to Regulus, stroking the baby, who was dozing, curled up, using her father's thigh for a pillow, the Snitch clutched in her hand. Tears rolled silently as, without checking a watch, Regulus whispered hoarsely, "I've got a little while yet." He kissed the top of her head.

"We should put her to bed," Balian said softly; they were both gazing adoringly at their daughter.

"Let me," Regulus said softly. They carefully climbed off the floor, Regulus lifting the baby against his chest. The memory followed Regulus down a familiar passage… Maia's bedroom. Only, it was now a nursery; Regulus flicked his wand, and a little glass orb dangling from the small chandelier glowed, projecting the solar-system against the walls and the ceiling. He laid the baby carefully in her cot, where she yawned widely; Regulus smiled as she cuddled up with an old teddy-bear, eyes sliding closed.

"Goodnight, poppet," he whispered softly, gazing down at her as he gently tucked a blanket over her. Then his features crumpled, and his face fell into his hand, a sob choking in his throat. "I'm so _sorry_, poppet…"

Maia couldn't stand to watch her daddy cry. She'd heard this before. The first time she'd encountered a Dementor… This was the night her father said goodbye.

Pushing the cuff of his sleeve roughly across his eyes, Regulus sniffed, gazing down at his daughter. His _poppet_. "You'll do best with Sirius for an uncle than with me as your daddy, anyway… He'll curse your boyfriends when you're sixteen…like I was going to… I reckon you'll love him… Much more fun than I ever would be…but then, I'm your dad. You're supposed to hate me…at least for a little while. You've probably escaped my tyrannising you… Punishing loved-ones comes so much easier to my family than it does any other… But I will miss _cuddling_ you… You'll look beautiful on your wedding-day, my odd-eyed little Maia, and I won't get to see you…" He gave a choked laugh, soft enough not to wake the baby.

The teenaged Maia wiped her burning eyes, her lip trembling, throat closed and hot. Someone sniffed; someone let out a choked sort of cough. Regulus gave the baby a kiss, then left the room. He'd dried his face before entering the little parlour. Balian's expression was heartbroken; she seemed to already know what Regulus was thinking of doing. They locked eyes, and flew into a tight, fiercely passionate embrace. Balian didn't cry. An acceptance that was painfully heartbreaking resonated from her. She was letting Regulus go. Honouring his decision. That big family Christmas she had envisioned, bab_ies_, plural, with their uncle…that was all gone. There would be no reconciliation between brothers. Death, not imprisonment, would take Regulus from his young family.

The memory faded; it was replaced by a small, grand bedroom; the décor made her think of Grimmauld Place before her and Sirius' raid. Regulus, wearing the same clothing as in the last memory, sat at a desk; a photograph of a Quidditch team glinted in a silver frame, illuminated by the single lamp by which Regulus was writing. Wiping his sodden face, glancing around the room and stalking away from the desk, Regulus carried one letter, to the far wall, where a hidden cupboard revealed a dumbwaiter; he set the sealed envelope and a little box on the dumbwaiter, and closed the door. He tucked two envelopes into his pocket, fumbling with a small note, and turned off the lamp, closing the door behind him as he left the bedroom. At the next door, Maia felt a lurch; it bore a plaque etched with Sirius' name. Regulus paused at the door, running a clever finger over the lettering, his expression…stark. Bereft.

Slipping into the drawing-room, the house dark, silent, he found an old locket in one of the glass-fronted cabinets, and folded the tiny note into it, clicking it shut. When he came to the gallery, he paused; Maia had heard movement too.

"Regulus?" A woman's voice.

Clearing his throat softly, Regulus said, "Yes, Mother…it's me."

"Finally home, dearest!" Regulus bit his lip.

"Actually, I came home for a change of clothes," he said apologetically, stifling a guilty wince. "I have to go out again." A sigh from upstairs.

"Be careful."

"Always," Regulus said, his expression desolated. "Mother?"

"Yes?" Regulus bit his lip, thinking better of something.

"Goodnight, Mother," he said softly. A pause.

"Goodnight, dearest."

Regulus made his way down to the kitchen. Pulling out a little vial half-full with swirling silvery memory, he took out his wand, and knocked on a familiar door.

"Kreacher? It's time to go…"

The memory dissolved, replaced by another, just as dark. The eerie green potion illuminated Regulus' scared young face, that of his petrified but clearly adoring companion.

"Kreacher?"

"The potion must be drunk, Master Regulus," moaned Kreacher, terrified, his bulbous eyes gazing fearfully at the motionless black water. Regulus nodded to himself. His hands trembling slightly, Regulus reached into his pockets. "Kreacher…this is _very_ important… After I have drunk the potion, you must take out the locket, and replace it with this one."

"Master…"

"No, Kreacher, listen to me… You must leave me here. Do you understand?" Kreacher's eyes widened. "I want you to take this vial, the locket and both these letters to Balian de Lusignan. Make sure she reads _this _one first. It's very important. And then I want you to do anything she asks you, Kreacher. I promise she'd never to anything like this to you… And I want you to promise that you'll tell nobody about this. Don't tell anyone in the family, not my mother or father, not Cissa—especially not Bella."

"Kreacher will do as Master Regulus orders," Kreacher croaked tearfully, his eyes on Regulus as he tucked the letters and vial into his pillowcase. Regulus wiped his face, turned to the basin and set his shoulders, determined resolution radiating from him. He'd never looked more handsome than just then.

"Kreacher," he said softly, conjured goblet in hand. "Even if I beg you to stop, you're to force me to keep drinking." Kreacher moaned tearfully, but he didn't dare disobey a direct order, but with every goblet of potion he forced his beloved master to drink, his face shone with tears, his sobs echoing with Regulus' across the deceptively still water, punctuated with Regulus' screams of "_Maia_!" and "C-come _back_…"

The last drop of potion was gone; Regulus fell silent, licking his lips, _thirsty_; Kreacher switched the lockets, and pocketed the one now lying broken in the drawing-room of Number Twelve.

Maia's face burned with tears as she watched Regulus reach the water's edge, panting, eyes longingly on the water; Kreacher had never looked like he wanted to disobey a direct order more as Regulus cupped a hand in the water, raising it to his mouth with a sigh of relief. The third time he lowered his hands, several more reached out of the water, taking hold of him. Regulus didn't struggle. He said only, "Kreacher, _GO_!" and he was dragged into the water.

The memory blurred; with Maia's tears, and with the sensation of flying upwards; the last thing they heard of the memory was Kreacher's agonised howl. The next thing she knew, she was being blinded by dazzling sunshine, landing with a very tangible _THUMP_ on the newly-polished drawing-room floor.

* * *

><p>The Pensieve swirled and shone innocently in the centre of the ring created by their regurgitated bodies. As everyone sat up, pale, tearstained, horrified faces blurred as tears burned; they fell of their own accord, silently. She couldn't help it. Ginny was crying softly; Neville, pale as death, had his arm around her. Harry and Ron were pale as ghosts, their eyes bloodshot. Hermione let out a squeak before bursting into tears; Cedric patted her back gently, looking dazed. George gazed at Maia, even his freckles white.<p>

As footsteps thundered and the door on the mezzanine balcony burst open, they jumped. "You _didn't_—!" Sirius shouted exasperatedly, eyes on the Pensieve. Then he gazed at them all, taking in their expressions. As he frowned concernedly at the sight of Maia, Hermione and Ginny crying, no other than Professor Dumbledore, accompanied by Madam Bones, Tonks, Remus and Mad-Eye, appeared on the balcony.

"What has happened here?" Professor Dumbledore asked serenely. Maia's shock finally wore off; she gasped, her stomach flipped, and she bolted to the door.

"Maia—?"

"I've got her!"

"What's going on?" Maia fled to the nearest bathroom, and emptied her stomach. Someone gathered her long hair out of the way, rubbing her back soothingly. She sank to her knees, gripping the cool porcelain. When she'd thrown up all her body could give forth, she slumped down, exhausted; she wiped her mouth as someone closed the toilet-lid and flushed it. Whoever it was helped her off the floor, shaky, too hot but shivering with cold, her eyes burning with silent tears; they perched on the edge of the bathtub, him gathering her up in his arms, her head cradled in his arm, pressed against his chest, as his warm hand slipped up and down, soothingly rubbing her back. With a staggering yawn—why did crying always bring on such intense lethargy?—Maia relaxed, then started to pull herself together. Emotionally-draining misery replaced her convoluted emotions, bringing clarity.

"He was really brave, wasn't he?" she whispered hoarsely. She didn't need an answer; she already knew he was the bravest man she had ever met.

"Your dad? Don't reckon there's anyone more…selfless," said a very familiar voice; George. "'Cept maybe Harry." Maia sniffed; George let her sit up, wiping her cheeks with his thumb. She was _tired_. She gazed around the bathroom, with its posters and collection of dirty magazines; it was the designated _Radio Rock_ bathroom. They sat in silence for a little while.

Then George rubbed her back soothingly, and Maia turned to gaze at him; he bent his head, resting his forehead gently against hers. Maia couldn't look away from his deep navy eyes if she'd wanted to. She felt the subtle tickle of his eyelashes, and George gently nudged her nose with his own. She gripped his t-shirt, just to have something to hold onto. He was…going to _ki_—the bathroom door banged open; George jumped; and they both toppled backwards into the bath. Maia started giggling; then, she couldn't stop. Hysterical giggles rang around the room.

"—Cheering Charm?" someone asked, and Maia, wiping her face of tears of mirth, choked on her giggles as she sat up, trying to kick her legs and climb out of the bath. Someone pulled her out, and Maia spied an incredibly pale Sirius in the doorway.

"Everything…alright in here?" he asked, eyeing her uncertainly. Maia nodded, wiping her face again, and gave him a sad smile that seemed to reassure him. She eyed him closely, stunned.

Sirius…had been crying.

"You watched," she said simply, and Sirius nodded. He held his arm out, and draped it around her shoulders when she joined him, leading her back to the drawing-room, where Ginny was talking very earnestly to Professor Dumbledore.

"—it _was_ Riddle's diary, it was a Horcrux. Regulus said a Horcrux got more powerful, stronger, with an emotional bond. Riddle said I'd poured so much of myself into the diary, into him, that he could leave the pages." Professor Dumbledore was gazing very thoughtfully at Ginny; he held the cracked ring in his palm. "It was…it wasn't a _memory_ of Riddle at all. It was…part of his soul."

"Yes, my dear," Professor Dumbledore said heavily, eyeing Ginny solemnly. "Yes, I believe it was."

"But—" Hermione spoke up, biting her lip.

"Yes, Miss Granger?"

"But that means he split his soul more than once," Hermione said, looking appalled.

"More than thrice, even," Dumbledore said, indicating the ring in his hand, the burned locket. "As you saw in the lake, Voldemort murdered enough to make an entire army of Inferi. Each…special act of murder by Lord Voldemort was commemorated by his creation of a Horcrux…"

"So he could never die," said Ron, who was still very pale.

"Yes, indeed," Professor Dumbledore said. "Theoretically."

"How did…" Everyone fell silent, glancing at Maia when she spoke. "How did Regulus realise what the locket was?"

"I would imagine he must have connected some of the dots with close observation of his master; he mentioned that Voldemort 'let slip' something, perhaps he bragged about his success… Regulus always was incredibly bright," Professor Dumbledore said, giving Maia a subtle wink, his eyes sparkling as they rested for a second on Sirius. "A family trait, I believe."

The drawing-room door opened, and only quick wand-work from Remus prevented the tray Tonks had carefully levitated upstairs from exploding its contents—large teapot, stacked teacups, and a large iced chocolate-cake—across the floor when Tonks tripped over the subtle ridge at the bottom of the doorframe. Like Sirius, and Remus, Maia realised, Tonks was very pale, her cheeks tearstained.

"Thanks, Remus!" she gasped, rubbing her ankle, as Remus levitated the tray over to the freshly-polished banquet table. "Just figures, I get all the way upstairs without knocking anything over or dropping anything…"

"You're getting better," Remus assured her. "You only spilt one glass of wine at dinner last night."

"I didn't even get to drink any of it first," Tonks sighed sorrowfully.

"Let's all have a piece of that _cake_," Sirius said enthusiastically. "Moony…is it one of yours?"

"It is," Remus smiled subtly, and Sirius did a sort of jig of delight. As Kreacher started pouring tea and slicing cake, whistling contentedly through his teeth, Maia turned to stare at him. He was completely unperturbed by everything.

"Sirius," Dumbledore said, also frowning subtly at the house-elf, "was there anything else with the box and the Pensieve?"

"No," Sirius frowned. "No, hang on a minute; there was. Here." He brought out the aged envelope from his pocket and passed it to Dumbledore. "It's Balian's handwriting." Professor Dumbledore pocketed the envelope without opening it, probably realising that many curious eyes still lingered on him. Cedric and Neville were first to receive cake, eager to forget what they'd seen in the Pensieve, to think no more of Inferi, eerie green potions, screaming house-elves and heartbroken eighteen-year-old fathers.

Maia didn't want to dwell on the Inferi, but she didn't _ever_ want to forget what her father had done. Sacrificing his own life to help destroy the Darkest wizard in history, expecting and knowing he would receive nothing for his efforts, turning his back on the cause he had once so heartily believed in. '_What right now do I have to a family of my own…?_' As everyone received tea and cake—Mad-Eye sniffing suspiciously at both before tucking in—Harry approached the headmaster.

"Professor, can I…talk to you about something?" He and Professor Dumbledore slipped away, leaving everyone else to their tea and chocolate-cake. Sirius disappeared, too, and Maia sat with George, observing Mad-Eye talking with Madam Bones—

"Never met a Death Eater I liked, but he was a good lad, in the end…"

"Deserves an Order of Merlin for that kind of sacrifice," Madam Bones boomed—

And Tonks, sitting against Remus' legs, her ankles crossed, as he sat on a freshly-upholstered chair, cradling a cup of tea with his elbows on his knees, talking quietly. Hermione looked deep in thought, probably still on Horcruxes.

"Surprised Mum's not in here, clucking," George said, glancing around, frowning. "Actually, that's a thought. Where _is_ Mum? _Has anyone seen Mum_?"

"Your mother?" Mad-Eye grunted, magical eye whizzing. "Up in the attic."

"Yeah, she wanted to grab the wallpaper for in here," Tonks spoke up.

Something clicked into place. "The _attic_!" she gasped, and as she surged off the floor, George shot her a horrified look; he lunged off the floor, teacup flying. If Mrs Weasley found the workshop—an explosion of sound echoed downstairs…

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Thoughts?


	32. Chapter 32

**A.N.**: The response to this story since I started rewriting it has been fantastic; here's the next chapter, to get you all off that dangerous cliff-hanger! This is the chapter where _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ goes public.

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_32_

* * *

><p>"<em>Fuck<em>!" George swore, and Maia whipped out of the room, throwing herself up the stairs, calls from the others ignored, a wide-eyed Sirius meeting them in the gallery.

"What's happened up there?"

"_Mum_!"

Sirius swore and legged it after them. Finally reaching the attic, they hurtled into the workshop, immediately ducking; cauldrons, packaging, ingredients were all whirling around, several owls hooting, alarmed. Mrs Weasley and Fred, clutching his wand in one hand, the Harry-dolly in the other, were stood five inches apart, scarlet in the face, bellowing incomprehensibly at the top of their lungs. A wastepaper-basket was clutched in Mrs Weasley's hand; it looked like she'd tried to bin everything. And it looked very like a bomb had gone off; Mrs Weasley and Fred were definitely making enough noise for a bomb.

Sirius pushed past Maia and George, both frozen in shock in the doorway. He waved his wand, and everything that had been whizzing around the room froze: Mrs Weasley and Fred didn't seem to notice, still bellowing at each other—

"—end up in St Mungo's or _Azkaban_!"

"—_know what we're doing, Mum!_"

"—only three O.W.L.s each—"

"We're not _Percy_, Mum!"

"I know very well you're not Percy! No prefect badges; no O.W.L.s; letters from professors every week; threats of expulsion since your second year! Your father and I didn't raise you to be this selfish!"

"The difference is—" Fred roared, "Percy _did_ get the prefect badge, _and_ the Head Boy badge, _and_ ten N.E.W.T.s, but we're the ones who aren't _ashamed to admit you're our mother_!"

Mrs Weasley choked, sucking in a gasp, before croakily shouting, "He may be confused where his loyalty is, Fred, but right now I'm dreadfully ashamed of _you_ for this behaviour! Going against my express wishes is one thing, but you'll drag your brother down with you! Georgie always follows where you lead!"

"George and me are partners!" Fred shouted. "He knows his own mind better than I do! It's him who always knows where the line is!"

"_Well you ignore him and cross it anyway_!" Mrs Weasley shrieked.

It went on, seemingly, for hours; George, bristling at the accusation that his twin ignored his opinions, joined Fred in the argument. It was horrible to watch, but someone may have stuck a Body-Bind Curse on her for all Maia could move from her spot at the doorway, riveted and horrified by the fight. Sirius successfully Disarmed everyone.

The subtle differences between the twins became more apparent the longer the row went on. Fred got redder and redder, shouting so loudly it hurt Maia's ears, bellowing a lot of hurtful truths he probably shouldn't have said to his mother, who by turns burst into tears and shrieked angrily, even slapping George once, bursting into tears because she'd hit her son, who became paler, sadder, more level-headed the longer the argument continued. His cheek shone pink where his mother had struck him, eyes glittering with tears, but he stepped away from her hug, calm but with his hands shaking with anger and hurt.

Sirius caught Maia's eye; neither knew what to do.

It was Fred who ended the argument. Gazing wide-eyed at his twin's pink cheek, he turned to glare at his mother, "If you _ever_ hit Georgie again, we'll pack our trunks and leave."

Mrs Weasley burst into tears again. But this time, she didn't resurface from them in an instant with a scathing retort about the twins' behaviour or substandard marks at school. She flung herself at George, sobbing.

George didn't seem surprised by this. While Mrs Weasley sobbed over and over that she was sorry, he just held her vertical, gently patting her back.

"Mum…" George sighed softly, sounding tired and sad. "What Percy said was true, we've never had much money. But you and Dad taught us the value of honest, hard work, and when we were little you encouraged us that we could do anything we set our minds to. Especially me and Fred."

"C-could have b-been Minister f-for Magic if you'd—wanted," Mrs Weasley choked. "Always were my b-brightest boy!"

"But Mum…we _don't_ want that," George said gently; his eyes had widened at his mother calling him her 'brightest boy'. "Dad's great at his job, and he's well-respected at the Ministry, but that's because he _loves_ his job… Fred and I…we love inventing."

Mrs Weasley gave a choked sort of snort. "Inventing dangerous things to help kids make trouble."

"Not…not necessarily dangerous, Mum," George said, shooting his twin a look before Fred, who looked angry, could say anything. "_Fun_. Creative. Things you'd want to get in your Christmas stocking… The way we used to spend all our pocket-money in Gambol & Jape's, remember… We want to inspire the next generation of kids to be creative, push the boundaries…to have fun. Not everyone grew up with five brothers, playing Quidditch in the orchard, Mum…" George's eyes settled on Maia, and she melted. "Maybe we can make their loneliness a little more bearable." Still crying, when Maia opened the doors into the parlour, Mrs Weasley allowed Sirius to extricate her from her son and guide her to the sofa.

"Molly," Sirius said gently, but Mrs Weasley sniffed and bristled, as if expecting he'd start an argument while her defences were drained. "Now, don't do that, Molly. I'm not going to start on you." He perched on the edge of the coffee-table, littered with Maia's things.

"You knew about all this," Mrs Weasley choked throatily, still crying. Dusting his hands off after levitating over a teapot, Sirius tucked his wand away and said simply, "Yes."

Mrs Weasley let out a soft snort, rolling her eyes. "I suppose you gave them the workspace."

"No," Maia said quietly, pouring cups of tea all round. "That was my idea."

"Oh, Maia!" Mrs Weasley exclaimed, crying again; Maia didn't think she had realised she was there until just then. Hiding her face in her hand, Mrs Weasley wailed, "Maia, what must you think of me?" Maia didn't know how to answer that. "What kind of mother you must think I am!"

Maia glanced down. "I don't remember having a mother," she said quietly, and Mrs Weasley sniffed, squeaking softly, before crying silently. "But you do what you think is best for your children… I'd think my mother would do the same." Her father had done what was best for her—for everyone's children, really—even at the cost of his own life.

Mrs Weasley whispered, "Balian," tremulously, unleashing more tears. "Gideon…_always_ h-had his eye on her!" Sirius gave a soft chuckle, his smile reminiscent.

"Those two were terrible. And Fab and Bertie," Sirius said sadly, his smile fading. The twins exchanged a look. Maia knew why; George had told her that their mother _rarely_ mentioned her two brothers, both of whom had been murdered by Death Eaters during the war. Maia gazed at Sirius. _Bertie_? Had _her_ uncle been friends with the twins' uncles?

"I'll tell you something else about Fab and Gideon," Sirius sighed, eyeing Mrs Weasley as a warm smile illuminated his features. "They'd have thought the twins were _fantastic_. You'd never have seen them! They'd have taken those boys here, there and everywhere creating chaos!" Mrs Weasley gave a miserable chuckle. Her face fell animatedly, letting out a shaky sigh.

"They'd be so _appalled_ by the way I've behaved," she whispered hoarsely. "This…this isn't what I'd wanted for my children."

"The joke-shop? _Molly_…"

Mrs Weasley shook her head. "N-not the joke-shop…that they had to _hide it from me_!" she wailed, and dissolved into tears. The twins exchanged a look.

"We didn't want to have to hide it, Mum," Fred said; this only seemed to upset her more. As did her surroundings; sniffing, she glanced around the _Talon_ Office, taking in the teapots, the chairs, the moving murals, posters and photographs, the original copies of _The Talon_, and whispered hoarsely, "What is this place?"

That she knew nothing of the kids' nonsense-paper, that she hadn't known about this room, that George was a talented artist; Fred, a literary humorist; Ginny, an excellent Quidditch journalist; Ron a keen chess aficionado; that she'd forced her twin sons into secrecy, made Mrs Weasley even more upset. She had never wanted to be the mother who alienated her children, who made it impossible for them to confide in her. She had always wanted an open, encouraging, supportive relationship with her children. That they couldn't come to her, that she had been blind to their personal triumphs, too hung up on official paperwork that told her the worth of her own children from the perspective of a stranger, to see their accomplishments for what they were, Mrs Weasley had a small breakdown.

It took Sirius, Remus, Mr Weasley, a firewhiskey-infused cup of tea and Professor Dumbledore to calm her down, by which time the twins were sat glumly on stools in the workshop, feeling awful about themselves, while Maia set the workshop to rights. Luckily Fred had already bottled the delicate potion he and George had been working on this morning, and no others were presently on the go, otherwise the results could have been catastrophic. And, it being a regular Muggle wastepaper-basket bought by Maia that Mrs Weasley had tried to dispose of everything into, anything she had managed to grab was easily salvaged.

It was Sirius' suggestion that Mrs Weasley "let the twins _show you_. Let them tell you their ideas, show you everything they've invented. No shouting, no disapproving, let them show you what they're so proud of" that Mrs Weasley agreed to the first step toward accepting her sons' chosen profession.

Perhaps more eager for their mother's approval than they had realised, the twins agreed to a full demonstration of all of their inventions. Except the love-potions—"the effects last for twenty-four hours, depending on the weight of the boy in question—"

"—and the attractiveness of the girl," George added, tipping Maia a wink.

Maybe it was seeing the expressions on the twins' faces, their excitement and delight as they whipped out joke after joke, the laughter of the other adults, or Professor Dumbledore's emphatic applause at some of their trickier inventions—wiping tears of mirth from his eyes as Maia finished colouring his long hair and beard with streaks of her vibrant coloured and special-effects hair-dye sticks—and agreeing to put an order-form for the First Aid kits into everyone's Hogwarts letters, that Mrs Weasley started to take the twins' joke-shop idea seriously.

It was the contract Remus suggested, between Mrs Weasley and the twins, that really seemed to cement Mrs Weasley's acceptance. As long as the twins passed their last year of Hogwarts, actually putting effort into their N.E.W.T. exams, and getting into no 'real' trouble, Mrs Weasley would accept that the twins were going to be joke-inventors, and would concert her considerable efforts on helping them open their shop when the time came.

One couldn't say that Mrs Weasley was yet bursting with enthusiasm over the idea, but, as Fred muttered, "It's a start."

"Maia, it's your turn," Mrs Weasley said, glancing at her, and Maia flushed as everyone glanced at her.

"Me?"

"Yes! You! You're thick as thieves with the twins now, I know you've been having Ginny help you with something; I want to know what you've been up to, cloistered up here till all hours with the twins!"

"_Mother_—!"

"—a lady _never_ tells—!"

"I want to see," Mrs Weasley said, looking amused.

"Me too, actually," Sirius nodded.

"I should also like to see your progress," Professor Dumbledore smiled, his beard and the ends of his hair still fuchsia and dazzling champagne-gold glitter (to match his robes). "I've heard many good things from the professors, but I've hardly seen you since you purchased your first wand from Mr Ollivander."

"That's right," Maia said softly, gazing at him. She hadn't seen him since then; it was odd, remembering that he was her guardian; she'd come to think of Sirius as her guardian. "Well…alright…"

A little embarrassed, but pleased by their reactions, Maia showed them everything she had come up with: her foundation, blush, highlighting-liquids, mascara, lip-crayons, Lip Tar and Lip Glasses, hair-dye sticks; her nail-lacquer collection; the special _Dancing Princesses_ nail-lacquers; the concepts for little makeup kits; her published fairytales; her recipe-cards; the pocket-wireless and headphones; her purses; the nail-wraps and special Quidditch League and Hogwarts Houses nail-lacquers, wraps and House-crest transfers; her stationery; ideas for helping the twins put together age-appropriate, staggered-price gift-boxes; concepts for the communication-diaries (which made Sirius sit up, eyes shrewd); the two-way Vanishing Boxes she'd thought of yesterday. And _The Talon_.

"And _I_ think Maia should put together a full cookbook," George said, beaming at her.

"Maia…you are_ human_, aren't you?" Fred asked doubtfully. "You're not a thousand-year-old twin-hearted Gallifreyan?" Maia grinned.

"Just hearing you reference _Doctor Who_ is reward enough for my efforts," she smiled.

Professor Dumbledore giggled suddenly. He was hidden by the first issue of _The Talon_. When everyone glanced at him, he just smiled. "Just reading about Opal's misadventures. And I _do_ like your caricature of Madam Umbridge, Mr Weasley. Never met a satirist so succinct!"

"Thanks!" George grinned proudly.

"This is a _very_ engaging read," Professor Dumbledore said, still giggling softly over Maia's story about Opal. "The artwork and photography? Supplied by yourself?"

"Some of the art is George's," Maia said, shooting him a warm smile; showing their products off, the twins had lovingly given her the credit she was owed for every single piece of artwork she had done for them, showing just how much work and effort she'd actually put into their venture, on top of paying for their courses at the sweet-shop and _Madam Primpernelle's_.

"Would it be out of turn of me to request copies of future issues?" Professor Dumbledore inquired.

"Not at all," Maia smiled. "We'll all have to vote on it, I mean—"

"Yeah, we're a democracy—"

"—even if Maia is Supreme Editor—"

"Sup_erb_ Editor—"

"But we're already sending it to Chummy's nieces and nephews," Maia finished, as the twins sighed, fluttering their eyelashes, fawning all over her, making the others laugh as she swatted them away, pink-cheeked.

"How much are you charging per issue?" Professor Dumbledore asked.

"Nothing."

"We wanted to charge them—"

"—through the teeth—"

"—but _we_ voted that as Chummy's lot are already giving us feedback on our products for free, we'd return the favour."

"Plus, it's only a lot of nonsense, really," Maia said, blushing. "And my stories at least breach Muggle copyright laws—"

"Yeah, _Muggle_—"

"Not _Wizard_!" the twins grinned.

"It's just something silly we play at," Maia said, blushing.

"On the contrary, my dear, this periodical is creative, intelligent, highly articulate and educational," Professor Dumbledore smiled proudly. "And you, all of you who gather here in this room to contribute your ideas, have done what no other publication in history has ever done; you have bridged the gap between the Wizard and Muggle worlds. You are educating each other in the customs and traditions of a foreign world, to better integrate, and blur the line between Muggle-born and pureblood cultures." Maia blushed, a little stunned. He thought _The Talon_ did all that?

The twins smirked at her, highly amused.

"Well," Fred sniffed nonchalantly, examining his fingernails, "that's exactly what _we _were going for, anyway." Everyone laughed.

"Let's have a look at this, Albus," Mr Weasley said, tucking on a pair of reading-glasses, and he sank into the sofa, reading the first issue of _The Talon _with a delighted grin.

"Well," Professor Dumbledore said, glancing around the illustrated parlour, full of personality. "I think after all this excitement, a little tipple and something moreish would be much appreciated before our meeting begins. We have much to discuss." He glanced at his pocket-watch. "We still have a few moments before the others start to arrive." Pausing to make two copies of each _Talon_ issue, so Mr Weasley didn't make off with the originals and Professor Dumbledore could take a full back-catalogue away, Maia and the twins followed the adults downstairs.

Everyone else, recovered from their experience inside the Pensieve, had started to pursue their own interests, realising Mrs Weasley wouldn't return with decorations for the drawing-room anytime that evening: so, when drinks and treats were served in the kitchen, Maia and the twins took some up to the drawing-room, where the others were still gathered. Maia retrieved the dusky rose-pink wallpaper, and Kreacher helped hang it, with the new blinds and curtains Maia had sewn weeks ago; then the twins conjured roller-skates, and Badminton rackets and shuttlecocks, and for a little while, they _played_. Then the meeting broke up; Harry wanted to ask Madam Bones about his punishment; all of the furniture—beautifully relined and upholstered by Kreacher and Maia—was brought into the drawing-room, re-arranged, and when several Order members stayed behind to chat, it was there they retreated with wine—careful of the brand-new sage-green and cream rug with tiny daffodil-yellow details.

The kids moved to the den, laughing freely; chatting; forgetting the Pensieve; applauding the twins going public with their shop; listening to Jack's evening broadcast; knitting; writing letters; eating sweets and sharing Butterbeers or little glasses of Maia's cider; playing the twins' board-game (or Badminton across the room, in Cedric and Harry's case), requesting songs from Jack and relaxing. It was a great end to a not-altogether cheerful but definitely eventful day.

Yawning, George sat down close beside Maia on the sofa, where she was sat cross-legged with her journal, a little bundle of knitting and a heavy book she had been using as a desk to write several letters on, and Maia smiled as he slipped an arm casually around her, offering her his bottle of Butterbeer.

"Want a sip?"

"I want more than a sip," she smiled, setting her knitting down to accept the bottle, eyes on George's. He grinned lazily, quirking an eyebrow as a shuttlecock soared past him, then sighed.

"Weird day we've had."

"Very," Maia agreed.

"Not always in a good way," George added. Sipping the Butterbeer, Maia flicked her eyebrows expressively.

Passing the Butterbeer back, Maia said, "Are you alright with everything?" George sighed, looking complacent, and nodded, shrugging.

"The worst is behind us, I suppose; Mum knows," George sighed. His cheek was no longer pink, and he'd accepted a hug and an apology from his mother.

"And the contract?" she asked, shifting in her seat so her legs were draped over one of George's knees, resting her head against his arm, now draped over the back of the sofa.

"I suppose it binds us now to what we'd been thinking of doing anyway," he said softly, expression thoughtful. His eyes twinkled when he glanced at Maia. "You've got a full year before you can rid of us!"

Maia beamed. "I'm glad." Two months ago, she had never heard of the Weasleys; now she didn't know what she'd do if she couldn't see them every day. The twins especially… She had bonded with them in a way she never had before. They were the most intelligent and creative people she'd ever met, and a little insane, it was true; but she felt like she fit like a puzzle-piece with them, more comfortable in her own ingenuity and eccentricities than ever before, because they loved those qualities in her. Having lived together for a month already, they had shot past that awkwardness of new-acquaintances, quickly developing an intense, symbiotic friendship.

It had astonished her, to really _see_ the influence their friendship had on all of them; her artwork all over their products; their writing in her nonsense secret-newspaper; even Fred referencing _Doctor_ _Who_; her confidence in her inventions; her praise of their intelligence and creativity, recognising two geniuses when she saw them, even if official testing-results labelled them time-wasting mischief-makers ill-suited to academic surroundings.

"Well, at least you'll be able to have one unpaid worker to help you through term-time," she smiled.

"Yeah, someone on the inside to help us gauge the effectiveness of our female-oriented advertising," George grinned.

"I was thinking someone to slip things in the girls' dormitories to test, actually," Maia smirked. George did a double-take.

"We _have_ been a bad influence on you," he said, fighting a grin. Peeling the label from the Butterbeer bottle, Maia smiled.

"I think we're a very _good _influence on each other," she said warmly. George beamed softly.

"We do make a good team, you and me," he said; Maia smiled, noticing that he hadn't mentioned Fred. She was in truth much closer to George, but Fred was still one of her best-friends in the house. "Hey, Maia…?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry about the Pensieve." Maia sighed, and said what had been on her mind.

"I'm not sorry I saw it. That's the second time I've ever heard my mother's voice, or seen her… That's the only time I've ever seen them together. And whatever I hear about my father now, I saw the very _best_ of him…" George nodded, taking the Butterbeer.

Taking a sip, he said, "I _barely_ remember Mum's brothers. Bill and Charlie do; but they never talk about them in front of Mum. Dad had to hide all the photos of them, Mum'd get so upset whenever she saw them…" Maia sighed heavily.

"I can relate." She hadn't looked at a photograph of Diane since before the beginning of the summer.

"You've had a bang-up summer," George said, frowning thoughtfully at her. Her hand resting against his thigh, Maia counted off on her fingers.

"Diane dying…the Dementor attack…the Pensieve…"

"At least bad stuff happens in threes," George yawned. "You're bound for a good stretch."

"It'd be nice for some really _good_ things to start happening."

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: A shorter chapter, but a climactic one. With the shop out in the open, this should open up new possibilities for the twins.


	33. Chapter 33

**A.N.**: As with most things about this story, I had too much fun writing this chapter! Not much happens, but there's a lot _planned_ within the chapter that is fun! And I'm going to upload this after my _Family, Sex and Society in Early-Modern Britain_ module, for which I have done _no_ reading whatsoever, and haven't ordered any of the core texts on _Amazon_. Oops.

It's not my fault! This weekend we had Rory and Amy's demise on _Doctor Who_—forget the flipping Weeping Angels; it's _all_ about the Giggling Cherubs! Bit disappointed by the episode—considering what Rory and Amy have gone through, that ending was just _blah_.

Also, my housemates and I played a hypothetical drinking-game whilst watching_ Fellowship of the Ring_, as in 'if we were playing a drinking-game, where would we have to drink?' It was _exhausting_! We figured out the panoramic shots would get us slaughtered within the first five minutes!

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_33_

* * *

><p>"<em>At least bad stuff happens in threes," George yawned. "You're bound for a good stretch."<em>

"_It'd be nice for some really good things to start happening."_

* * *

><p>"No funding for the school," Remus said flatly.<p>

"_None_?"

"Not a Knut. No funding, no grants…"

"No retort," Sirius grumbled miserably.

"How much does it _cost_ to run a school?" Ginny asked impatiently. They sat in the kitchen, and had been enjoying breakfast before the post arrived, bringing with it Remus' rejection from the Office of Education.

"Well, you have to find the premises; then pay teachers' salaries. You've got to furnish the place; equip it with books, everything; then sort out where the lunches are coming from. Hire a school Healer too, I suppose," Hermione said sadly.

"And we can't ask the parents to pay extortionate fees," Remus said. "It's breaking a lot of families just existing."

"What about investors?" Ailith asked doubtfully. Remus looked so disheartened; Tonks had her hand tucked over his, looking compassionate. Remus gave a dark sort of laugh.

"Ask witches and wizards on the street to invest in a school for werewolf-children?" he said sadly, shaking his head. "When most of them cross the street if they know what we are?"

"Well then, we'll just have to do something to make the prospect of investing completely irresistible!" Maia said, her tone bolstering. Remus gave a wry smile. "Disguise fundraising as something people really want."

"Like what?"

Maia glanced around, brain churning; they really should have been thinking about this already, in anticipation for the rejection of government funding. She clocked Jack, in early for brand-practice with Vittorio, who was plucking at his violin; Jack was going through records to play later that afternoon. The foremost, _Boomtown Rats_, had Maia thinking of Bob Geldof's horrendous child-naming sensibilities…and then she grinned… Bob Geldof… _Band Aid_.

The twins opening their day's post; Kreacher cutting up potatoes to make chips; Ginny wearing a set of Maia's leopard-print nail-wraps (with the ring-finger on her left hand scarlet, with the Gryffindor crest); Tonks in her _Radio Rock_ t-shirt, she grinned. Because it was all clicking together beautifully.

"What?" Sirius was eyeing her smile warily.

"I know that smile," George said, grinning. "That's Maia's _I've-got-a-cunning-plan_ smile."

"A music-festival," Maia said simply. Jack glanced up, letting his records drop to the table, his eyes lighting up.

"You'll have to expand, Maia," Remus said, glancing from Jack to Maia. Maia took a deep breath.

"Muggles have music-festivals during the summer," she said. "They get tonnes of great bands to headline the events, tickets are sometimes as expensive as £150 each. Mostly, that kind of festival brings out the adolescent, young-professional crowd, kids from about sixteen to their twenties. But you get other kinds, like Twinwood, where it's all vintage stuff, dancing."

"You think a music-festival would raise that kind of money?" Remus asked.

"If we do it properly. We could have people volunteer," Maia said, _Like the Olympics…need to watch the Opening Ceremony_. "To run the event. People in the Order, maybe, their contacts. We could ask the bands to perform for free—it'd be great exposure for some of them. Sirius, we could play on people not knowing The Fugitive's identity and say you'll be there, _Radio Rock_ could cover the festival live—we could say it's _Radio_ _Rock_ organising it."

"Ailith's got loads of contacts in the music industry," Sirius said, glancing at her as she poured tea for everyone. "You could get us a few star performers? And the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_, of course."

"Of course," Jack grinned.

"We could even put together a record for charity, all the best performances over the night put on one live record," Maia suggested, and Jack grinned.

"What about other entertainment?" he said. "Like you said, Twinwood; my parents went last summer. They said there were loads of bands, full jive bands, loads of dancing, and gin bars…"

"I don't know any Wizard entertainers. You mean comedians and things, I suppose?"

"What about the aero-gymnasts?" George spoke up.

"Gymnastics in mid-air on broomsticks," Fred grinned.

"_They're_ very good," Mrs Weasley nodded.

"I'm sure we can come up with a few more entertainers," Jack said, nodding.

"I suppose one would have to think about this with location considered into schematics," Mrs Weasley said shrewdly. "Where would this…_festival_ be hosted?"

"Hogwarts?"

"What about the World Cup Stadium?"

"They took it down a month after the Finals."

"Would your friend Violet be able to negotiate one of the Quidditch League pitches?"

"It's the beginning of the season."

"What about _camping_?" Jack asked.

"Hey?"

"Glastonbury, Isle of Wight, they're long events. People _camp_. What if we could make it a two-day event? A weekend's worth of entertainment. Then you could put the price up."

"That would open up a lot of possibilities," Maia said, eyeing Jack, a slow grin forming. "Overnight entertainment, too. _Food_!" she gasped.

"Yeah, but there aren't really catering-companies who'd…" Jack bit his lip.

"Well, we could set up food stalls," Maia said, glancing at Mrs Weasley, whose eyes had brightened. "With this amazing weather we've been having, we could do _barbecue_—"

"What about Florean?" George spoke up. "He could have a stall selling ice-creams."

"The sweet-shop—"

"Madam Rosmerta could set up a bar," Sirius added. "Keep everyone hydrated!"

"More susceptible to parting with their gold that way," Jack smirked.

"What about the twins?" Mrs Weasley said, and everyone stared at her. The twins exchanged a look.

"If you want us to be stand-up comedians—"

"—we're _flattered_!"

"Well, that too," Mrs Weasley said, giving them a look, "but I was thinking more along the lines of your _shop_." Maia gazed at Mrs Weasley.

"The profits would go straight into their pocket," Jack pointed out. "Same with Florean and Rosmerta."

"How much do they charge at festivals to set up food-stalls?" Maia murmured, glancing at him. "Some thousands, isn't it?"

"A _fraction_ of what they _earn_ at those events," Jack said.

"What if, whoever we ask to set up stalls, they contribute a percentage of their profits made over the weekend?" Maia mused.

"Fifty percent," Sirius said. "Nothing less. Otherwise it _is _just money in their pockets."

"With a binding magical contract," Chummy spoke up; she had stopped by for breakfast after being on guard-duty. "So they can't cheat you out of the full fifty-percent."

"Boys, you could set up a stall with all your finished products," Mrs Weasley said. They gaped at her. "Don't look at me like that! You do this, you'll put yourselves on the map as a company to watch! You'll create excitement for when you open your shop next summer."

"Mum…"

"Have you been on the firewhiskey?" Mrs Weasley clipped Fred round the ear, though she was smiling.

"Our contract stipulates I will concert all my not-inconsiderable talents into helping you launch your business," she said. "This is a prime opportunity for you; you will not waste it."

"How come that sounded like a threat?"

"It's Mum's inflection."

"Where are we going to throw this festival?" Sirius asked. Maia, watching Opal play with her Harry-dolly and the little plush hippo she had bought at Whipsnade Zoo, going through photographs taken when the were-babies had come for the camping-weekend with Chummy's lot, she said, "The Hobbit-hole."

"Is it big enough?" Mrs Weasley asked dubiously; everyone laughed.

"More than."

"It wouldn't exactly fit a hundred-thousand," Sirius smiled, "But it'd be perfect for this, a few thousand wizards camping."

"Can I come to the party?" Opal asked suddenly. Maia stared at her.

"Kids," the twins grinned. "Oh, we'd have your school open by September, Remus!"

"Definitely," George grinned. "Set a load of kids loose at our stall…" He rubbed his palms together, grinning.

"We could do special-effects fireworks for the performances," Fred said. "Firework display in the evening—"

"Before bedtime," George smirked.

"You'd need a playground," Mrs Weasley said.

"Yeah, we could set up right beside it," George said eagerly.

"And the sweet-shop, Florean's—"

"The food beside the biggest consumers," Maia said, watching Opal demolish an apple-and-pear bread-and-butter pudding for breakfast.

"You could do a family-pass," Chummy suggested. "With a special camping-area for families."

"Yeah, so you wouldn't get duels over parents cursing hardcore concert-goers for waking their kids at three a.m.," Jack chuckled.

"And make sure you charge the families through the teeth," Chummy added, "because I'll be making sure my nieces and nephews get to go."

"What about transportation?"

"The Hobbit-hole is connected to the Floo Network—and it has Muggle-repelling magical protection," Maia said.

"People could fly; Apparate—"

"The Knight Bus!"

"Yeah!"

"I can sort out all the permits," Chummy said, setting her teacup down. "And we can ask Lance to help out—he worked on the World Cup. He'd be good to have organising set-up for the stage, camping-areas, pathways from the different zones…"

"I can work as _Security_!" Tonks grinned. "Reckon Mum would help out in one of the food stalls, too! And Dad's itching to see the twins' stuff!"

"Yeah, Bill could work Security, too," George said, grinning.

"You two would blend right in at a festival," Maia smiled at Tonks.

"And," Fred said slowly, eyeing a yawning, tousle-haired Harry as he dropped downstairs with Ron, "we could have Harry and Cedric schmoozing the crowds, asking for donations."

Harry peered around, seeing their grinning faces; Sirius and Tonks were laughing. Harry flushed. "What?"

"Remus," George grinned, "if we have to _whore_ Harry and Cedric out to every lusty witch at that festival, you'll have your were-school!" Everyone in the kitchen burst out laughing, both at George, and the expression on Harry's face.

"Why am I being whored out?" he asked, eyes wide. Fred and George giggled.

"Don't worry about it, Harry," Maia smiled, patting his hand. "Have some breakfast. We'll explain later."

"Maia," Mrs Weasley said, and she glanced up. "You'll have a stall too."

"Me?"

"Hermione and I can help you increase inventory," Mrs Weasley said. "If you work on your cosmetics, we could help you make them all up so you'll be ready. Kreacher can help put together wirelesses, and the three of you can make up more of those First Aid kits, they're not _just_ appropriate for Hogwarts students."

"Why can't I help?" Ginny asked.

"Because I would imagine the potions Maia brews are very complex," Mrs Weasley said. "Well beyond N.E.W.T.-level."

"Well…" Maia said, glancing at Ginny, who was looking put out. "I will need someone to help at the stall."

"Yeah, and we'll need a runner to bring us food," Fred nodded. Ginny rolled her eyes.

"Could we put up a stall for S.P.E.W.?" Hermione asked. "Now that there's all this interest, I'd hate to lose the opportunity to promote it further."

"We could even ask Dobby to help out," Harry yawned, "whatever you're talking about."

"That's true," Fred said. "We could pay Tink and Dashy to work. Tink could work the food stalls."

"People _could_ bring picnics," Maia mused. "The food stalls could be features, otherwise you'd be run off your feet."

"That's an idea," Jack nodded. "We could sell things like cones of chips—"

"Muscles!" Tonks blurted. "If we're doing it at the Hobbit-hole. A dish of _moules marinières_ with a plate of fresh chips and a glass of cider." She licked her lips.

"We could do sweets," Sirius suggested. "A cake-stall. Maia, all your favourite desserts."

"That immense Black Forest Gateau," Mr Weasley spoke up eagerly, grinning.

"Yes!"

"What about steak sandwiches? Meatballs?" George grinned. "Sausages in crusty rolls?"

"With a milkshake or ice-cream from Florean after, or an éclair," Sirius smiled.

"Oh! We could do a big _vat_ of ratatouilles, tonnes of fresh bread—and I can sell my _cider_!"

"Yes!" Sirius grinned enthusiastically.

"With a sample of your hangover-cure," Fred said darkly, and everyone laughed.

"That's a point; we could whip up extra batches of _Walk-of-Shame_, and _Redneck-No-More_," George said. "With the heat-wave, camping…and if Madam Rosmerta sets up… We'd have to have a Healer's tent."

"We can ask my new _friend_!"

"Yeah! And Ced's Mum!"

"Hey, we should see if Mal wants to set up a stall," Maia said.

"It'd be bigger than his shop!" Everyone chuckled.

"We've overlooked the obvious—a _Radio Rock_ merchandise stall," Jack said, snapping his fingers. Maia started laughing to herself.

"What… What is this, Maia?"

Laughing, hard, Maia choked, "A Harry Potter _kissing booth_." The kitchen exploded with laughter.

Harry did not look amused.

"Nah, put Vittorio on the booth," Jack grinned at his ever-silent friend. "Trust me."

"_Oh_," Maia breathed, turning to stare at Hermione. "_Huge_ oversight!"

"What?"

"What does every truly _great_ school have? Oxbridge, Yale, Hogwarts?"

Hermione gasped, eyes widening. "A _library_!"

"Exactly," Maia grinned. Turning back to Remus, her expression turned solemn. "Remus, what's your school's curriculum like?" Remus gaped at her. "Reading, writing, arithmetic? A bit of Wizarding history? Nap-time, especially close to the full-moon. What about _Muggle_ history, literature?"

"I…"

"We could fill it with Dickens," Maia said dreamily to Hermione, who nodded eagerly. "All the greats—Shakespeare, Tolkien, Carroll, Terry Pratchett, Wodehouse, Hodgson-Burnett, Alcott, the Brontës, Austen, Lewis… All the poets. _The Wind in the Willows_."

"Beatrix Potter," Hermione smiled. "I had them when I was little, learning to read."

"I could donate a full set of my fairytales," Maia said, grinning. "As part of my investment." Remus raised his eyebrows. "Well of course I'm investing!"

"I'll apply to be governor," Sirius said, raising his hand. Remus choked on his tea.

"_You_?!"

"What?"

"Padfoot," Remus sighed, setting his teacup down, "I love you. You're my oldest and best friend. I would and have taken curses for you. But _you are not coming within ten leagues of my school_."

"C'mon! I'd be a good governor! All those changes I wanted to make to Hogwarts!" Sirius said indignantly.

"Sirius, you wanted to officiate Naked Tuesdays and reinstate corporal-punishment of first-years," Remus said drily.

"Hark, who's talk, Mr Exhibitionist!" Fred grinned.

"Didn't you spend a _month_ wearing nothing but a tie?" George smirked.

"Oh, I'd have liked to see that," Tonks sighed, smirking, as Harry laughed at Remus' flushed expression.

"I stand by my previous statement—you and James put the Imperius Curse on me," Remus said blithely.

"Sad thing was, Minerva almost believed it," Sirius said, with a comical expression. Remus chuckled.

"Remus," Opal said thoughtfully, suddenly appearing from under the table, making Sirius jump.

"Yes, sweetheart?" Remus smiled warmly, and Maia was sure Tonks _swooned_.

"Do I have to wear _uniform_ at school?" Opal asked, crinkling her nose.

"You don't like the idea of a uniform?"

"My cousins wear uniforms," Opal grimaced. "They're grey and horrible, with square dresses."

"I think she means gingham," Maia smiled. "I had red gingham, too. And grey skirts. The pinafore dress wasn't bad, before they changed the design."

"I hadn't even thought about a uniform," Remus admitted.

"Can Maia make mine?" Opal asked. "She's made me _lots_ of nice dresses. And my rah-rah skirt." They all chuckled as she shimmied her tiny hips, the floaty ruffles of her tiered floral skirt quivering.

"I'm sure if you asked very nicely," Sirius said, smiling indulgently, "Maia would draw you up some very pretty pictures for a school uniform."

"_Please_!" Opal begged. "I'll give you all my Knuts in the Swear Jar!"

"How many have you got now?" Maia said consideringly.

"_Hundreds_!"

"You've been listening to Jack's band-practices, haven't you?" Opal dimpled. Maia played with one of her ringlets, smiling at Remus. "Are you sure you're ready for this? Teaching primary-school children?"

"After trying to teach O.W.L. Defence to a certain pair of redheaded twins who shall remain anonymous for their own safety," Remus smirked at the twins, who glanced up from their post and preened, "Opal won't be any trouble. Will you?"

"Nope."

"You'll have to have a playroom," Maia said thoughtfully, watching Opal with the Harry-dolly and plush hippo. "For when the weather's bad."

"True," Remus sighed, eyeing Opal thoughtfully. "It's been a long time since I was a child… Opal, what do children _need_?"

"Mm… Sweeties!" Opal grinned, making everyone laugh.

"You _could_ have a tuck-shop," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"Oh, my primary-school had a _great_ tuck-shop!" Maia grinned.

"We could even stock one of the shelves," George said, glancing up with a grin. "Some of our child-oriented stuff."

"We could donate our board-games to the playroom," Fred said, nodding.

"You'd have to provide everything, like ink and composition-books," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"I _loved_ composition books," Maia sighed wistfully, remembering back to primary-school. "Spelling-tests; reading _Treasure Island_; learning the Kings and Queens of England and all Queen Victoria's children. _Little Miss_ books; arts-and-crafts; visits to the Victorian school, the silk-mill, the British Museum, the Queen's dollhouse in Windsor Castle, the old-fashioned sweetshop. Scented gel-pens, stickers and _Pokémon_ cards traded on the playground, _yo_-_yos_, hopscotch. Primary-school…it was bliss."

"I loved spelling tests too," Hermione said, with a tiny smile. The others laughed.

"I could put nice homework-diaries in the tuck-shop. Colour-change inks, my scented lip-glosses for something fun… Maybe _I _can produce scented pens!" Maia beamed.

"We've already perfected crayons," George smiled.

"Do we get stickers?" Opal asked. "My cousins get stickers if they get all their spellings right."

"I'm sure you'll get rewards for good behaviour," Maia smiled.

"Like a full education," Sirius said drily.

"What about languages?" Maia asked Remus. "Will the children have any language-lessons?"

"Well, my professor friend knows several European languages," Remus said.

"My primary-school language-lessons were really fun," Maia smiled. "Actually… I probably still have all my old composition-notebooks…" She gasped softly. "And I _definitely_ have all the workbooks Diane made for me, for spelling and languages! They're _amazing_—I still use them to look back to when I'm stuck for a translation!"

"God, you're such a _nerd_!" Sirius laughed, and Maia grinned.

"What about sports?" Hermione asked musingly.

"Sports?" Remus said. "Like Quidditch?"

"Children and Bludgers," Mrs Weasley said. "An infallible combination."

"Well, there's your school-name and motto, Moony!" Sirius grinned. "What about sports, Hermione?"

"Well, I mean things like rounders, football, badminton," Hermione said.

"It'd be a good way of integrating some Muggle culture," Sirius said thoughtfully, then chuckled. "You could stock the library with back-issues of _The Talon_!"

"You could have Sports Day," Maia chuckled. "And a school fête in the springtime, to raise more money."

"Hell, if this festival is a hit, we could just make it an annual thing," Jack said, sighing as Opal turned to him with her little hand outstretched. He handed over two Knuts.

"Much more fun than a kids' school-fête," Maia agreed. "What about _art_?"

"Art?" Remus repeated, as Opal's face illuminated with delight.

"Yeah." George grinned suddenly. "We could draw up some sketches for colouring-books," he said, glancing at Maia, who groaned. "What?"

"Colouring-books full of my fairytale illustrations," she said, then tilted her head thoughtfully. "They'd be a good idea, actually. Ope, what do you think? A colouring-book with all my princess pictures in?"

Opal gasped softly. "Oh, yes please!"

"I'll take some of them," Chumley smiled. "I've got a few birthdays coming up."

"I haven't had a colouring-book in ages," Tonks sighed wistfully. "My Gran always gave me them."

"We could print up a load to sell at the festival," George said. "Something to help parents get their kids to sit still for a little while."

"We could also—in your school, I mean—do things like crafts," Hermione said. "Making Christmas ornaments, decorating Easter eggs. I wish they'd taught us to knit at school, that's where my grandmother learned. And embroidery. She could darn a sock like no other!"

"That's a good idea, Hermione," Mrs Weasley said thoughtfully. "I should've taught the boys when they were little—"

"_What_?!" the boys spluttered, laughing.

"Actually, that's a point; during the wars, it was bedridden soldiers who sewed all the uniforms," Maia said.

"My great-granddad always carried a sewing-kit after the war," Hermione said, smiling. "Mum says he did all the darning for his wife."

"I'd love to have combined primary-school with everything Diane taught me, Maia said wistfully. "Music!"

"I always wanted to learn the piano," Hermione said sadly, her expression becoming nettled. "The headmistress refused to give me lessons, though she gave them to _Hayley_."

"Girls," Sirius said, his expression becoming solemn. "Would _you_ like to attend Remus' school?" The others laughed.

"No; the other kids would tease us for being so great big!" Maia said, wide-eyed, and Sirius chuckled. "But don't worry, Remus, we'll write our ideas down for you."

"I appreciate that," Remus smiled.

"Just out of interest," Tonks said, "how many kids do you have so far?"

"Well, I've got confirmed places for Opal, Horatio, Vera, Thomas and Memory," Remus said, "and interest from the parents of about six or seven others."

"Well that's fantastic!" Tonks beamed. "A dozen kids!"

"That's a whole class!" Maia smiled. "With an _excellent_ student-teacher ratio."

"When should we throw this festival?" Sirius asked, and everyone fell silent, thoughtful.

"Before September," George said.

"Otherwise we won't be able to have a stall," Fred said.

"And we wouldn't be able to help out," Hermione added.

"If we really go at it, we could have everything organised in a few weeks," Maia said. "We've already got the location, and the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_' commitment will go a long way to bringing in other acts. Sirius, you can get in the studio and start telling people about it _now_. Perhaps we can set up specific days when tickets will be available to purchase; maybe Mal would let us organise a table outside the _Shack_."

"What about the middle of August?" Sirius suggested.

"The eighteenth," Maia said. "It's a Saturday."

"How do you know that?"

"My birthday's the Sunday," Maia said, shrugging. "And then, when we've got everything sorted out, you'll still have the rest of the month to put the finishing touches to your plans for the school, Remus. You could open the doors on the first of September this year, like Hogwarts."

"But that's your birthday," Sirius said.

"Hopefully, if we can get the atmosphere right, it'll be like a huge party anyway," Maia smiled. "I've never actually had one before."

"Now we're _definitely_ doing it that weekend," Jack grinned.

"We'll have to do a sort of test-run first," Mrs Weasley said, "to sort out the kinks."

"Easy. Harry and Neville's birthdays," Sirius said

"They're on a Monday and Tuesday," Mrs Weasley said, checking the calendar.

"So what? Kids can come in the afternoon; everyone working can stop by in the evening; we can set up a big marquee, design a playground," Sirius said. "We can ask people to bring tents—"

"And picnics," Maia added. "We can provide an evening-meal."

"We'll do a test-run of a firework-display," Fred said eagerly.

"I'll back you for that," Sirius said, and the twins grinned.

After murmuring something to Vittorio, who nodded subtly, Jack said, "We can provide evening entertainment—and I've got a few ideas about who to approach for the festival."

"What about party-favours?" Maia suggested. "They could be test-runs for those gift-boxes we talked about." The twins' faces lit up.

"Yes! And party-crackers!"

"Um…" Hermione bit her lip. "This is all…quite excessive…for just us."

"True," Sirius said thoughtfully. "What about inviting—Neville? Where's Neville? There you are—have you got anything planned for your birthday?"

"No," Neville said, rather sadly.

"Reckon you'd mind inviting all your family to a party?" Sirius asked. Neville's face lit up. Harry looked rather glum. "Harry… What about the other boys in your dormitory? Are you on good terms with them?"

"Yeah," Harry shrugged.

"Invite them. The girls on your Quidditch-team too. What about your old captain?" Sirius asked.

"Oliver? He's on the Reserves for Puddlemere United."

"Invite him, too."

"What about Lee?" Fred asked. "Our mate. Can we invite him?"

"Absolutely," Sirius grinned.

"Can I invite Cho?" Cedric asked, flushing red as the twins made kissy noises at him.

"Of course you can invite Cho," Sirius smiled. "What about all those friends you keep going to see?"

"I'll invite them, too," Cedric nodded.

"I'm coming too!" Opal piped up.

"And I'll bring all my lot," Chummy said, making Opal gasp and clap her hands delightedly.

"And Memory and Horatio!"

"Who else?" Sirius murmured thoughtfully.

"I'll invite the Creevey brothers," Ginny smiled.

"We'll ask around the Order; they're all invited, of course," Remus said thoughtfully. "Perhaps Amelia's niece might like to come, she's in Harry and Neville's year, and her father would make a good contact."

"What about some of your contacts, Remus?" Maia asked him. "The Lovetts, and the professor. Any others?"

"It would be a good gesture of friendship," Sirius said sombrely.

Quietly, Harry said, "What about you?"

Sirius gazed at him, perplexed. "What about me?"

"All these people… Won't you have to stay behind?" Sirius suddenly chuckled.

"Nobody would recognise me now," he grinned. "Nobody would ever think I'd brazen it out and dare go out in public. Getting away with it will make the risk that much more enjoyable. And anyway, I'm through with hiding." His tone turned almost grumpy; Remus shot his friend a wary look, mirroring the trepidation on Harry's face.

"So, what've we got to do?" Mrs Weasley said, a finger curled over her chin, one hand on her hip. Maia, who had started scribbling everything in her journal since they had started talking about ways to raise money for the school, glanced up from the list of people to invite.

"George and I can design the invites," she said. "Jack, you and Ailith look into entertainment. The twins and I can put together goodie-bags for the kids; someone should talk to Florean and Madam Rosmerta. We can take Lance over to the Hobbit-hole to sort out where everything can go. You, me and Kreacher can sort out the menu for the evening-meal, Mrs Weasley, perhaps a buffet-style, with a separate table for desserts; it's much more sociable that way, casual. Then we'll need to sort out a stage; I don't know where to start with the playground, but we can tell people to bring their swimsuits for the lake, and their brooms, for Quidditch."

"We can sort out party-games, too," George said enthusiastically. "For the kids."

"Make sure everybody ends up with a prize," Mrs Weasley intoned.

"Perhaps we can alert the Knight Bus that they'll be having an influx of passengers," Remus suggested. "On the weekend of the festival, I mean. They might bring their prices down for the occasion."

"That's a good idea," Tonks nodded. "Might be a bit anarchic otherwise. Maybe they could set up a timetable for the weekend; witches and wizards in certain areas should gather in a specific place to catch the Bus over to the Hobbit-hole. Perhaps we could sell tickets for the Knight Bus _with_ the festival tickets, so it's all organised before…"

"Dobby!" Maia blurted. "We should invite him, too!"

"What about Hagrid?" Harry asked, nodding. "He has to be there."

"Hagrid's…doing work for the Order," Sirius said delicately. "He'll be away for the summer."

"Oh," said Harry, disappointedly.

"Alright," Mrs Weasley said, slipping on her reading-glasses to go over Maia's journal, "we've only got a few days until the thirtieth, we'll have to get everything organised quickly. I need something to write on…" Mrs Weasley was supplied with a clipboard and stylus, and spent the next twenty minutes divvying out orders, with deadlines for when she wanted them carried out by.

"Mrs Weasley, if you hadn't been a mother, you'd have made a very _fine_ Army General," Maia said, as she received her orders:

1. _Invitations for party_

2. _Tickets, etc. for festival_

3. _Colouring-books, hair-dye sticks, lip-gloss, stickers etc. for goodie-bags_

4. _Finish makeup; produce multiple quantities + more First Aid kits_

5. _Write for extra run of fairytales_

6. _Sort out buffet and dessert-menu w. Tink and Mrs W_

7. _Work on knitted animals, clutch purses, clothes etc_.

8. _Put together more pocket-wirelesses_

9. _Set up Hobbit-hole for party; marquees, stage, decorations, playground, tables, etc._

10. _Write to clothing manufacturer for another run of _Radio Rock_ garments_

11. _Tidy up Diane's workbooks for Remus to print, if so desired_

12. _Buy hardback Classics, Little Miss and Mr Men, Beatrix Potter, Terry Pratchett books, Alice, Enid Blyton, etc. for were-school library_

"Thank you, Maia," Mrs Weasley smiled. "Now, boys—" She turned to the twins, who looked slightly dazed at their mother taking charge so efficiently. "I want a full inventory of all your stock, including prices and target-clientele; we'll have to organise your stall by age-group for efficiency, the pricier items out of children's reach. You're going to provide me with posters of product-concepts that we can advertise, as well as your order-forms we can hand out, and I want you to put the cost of the goodie-bags down as a business-expense—"

"I'll pay for them," Sirius spoke up. "You're a start-up business; I won't have you financially burdened. The same goes for the firework-displays."

"That's very generous of you," Mrs Weasley said, with a small smile.

"And Maia, you too," Sirius added. "Charge me wholesale, though, as I'm buying in bulk!"

"We can do market-research at the party," George said. "Different types of colouring-books; which fireworks and things are the favourites…"

"Maia, you're to do a few designs for the school uniforms," Mrs Weasley said. "Write it down. I want five different designs, with fully made-up examples, including shoes and cloaks, before the last week of August, to choose from and put into production."

"I'll put an RSVP on the invitations, too," Maia said, "so we know how many kids are coming—we'd better sort out extra facilities, too."

"Yes! And _make sure_ Ginny helps with the decorating," Mrs Weasley said sternly.

"What can I do?" Remus asked.

"_You_ can keep your nose to the grindstone and have the school ready to open its doors on the first of September," Sirius said, grinning.

"Maia, you're to provide those workbooks," Mrs Weasley reminded her, and Maia nodded.

"I'll add some fun book-bag designs to my collection of purses," Maia said, grinning, "so Opal can choose one for school." She had _visions_ of little children in short-sleeved knee-length robes with a little hood, over little skirts and trousers, with little polo-style tops and turtlenecks, with perhaps a tiny ascot for the girls, a short-sleeved shirt for the boys without a tie, little pinafore-aprons for the girls, a waistcoat for the boys, wearing shoes like TOMS, black for the winter, the same colour as the uniforms for summer. Warm tights and gloves, knitted hats and jumpers, little cardigans.

"I will inquire into the tuck-shop when I go to the sweet-shop," Mrs Weasley said. "A few boxes of their most-popular sweets—"

"I'll work on designs for the homework diaries," Maia said, when Mrs Weasley turned to her. "Fred, George, you're doing designs for the boys' ones."

"Dragons, hippogriffs," George nodded. "You'll have to do Quidditch ones, you've got the licence. And we'll give you wholesale prices on a few boxes of our good stuff, Remus."

"Oh, and I've got to ask Mal whether he wants a stall," Maia said, scribbling in her journal.

"Chummy's putting together the legal-agreement for the fifty-percent donation," Mrs Weasley said: The others had already cleared off for work with their orders; Jack was hastily scribbling notes to his friends in other bands, ready for the owls to take off; Hermione was going over the S.P.E.W. manifesto to put into print; Neville was making a list of all his relatives to invite; Cedric was writing to Cho and his friends; and Opal was dictating a letter to Ginny, who was writing for her to Chummy's lot, letting them know about the party.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: What do you think? I wasn't going to go into so much detail about this conversation, but I was on holiday, writing by hand, and it all just flowed so well…


	34. Chapter 34

**A.N.**: To my dedicated followers, _Beatrix Hart_, _Marlicat_, _MuggleCreator_, and _Sydell_, I'm glad this story helps. Also for _Sibarian_, _TooLazyToLogIn_, _Alisabeth_, _LittleBabeBlue_ and , _chintz_ and _Bingo_.

This is a long chapter, and I had _sooo_ much fun creating Maia's cosmetics line! There is also Harry and Neville's birthday-party, which was fun to dream up the details for. And the Hogwarts letters arrive! Sirius makes a speech and shows baby-photos…

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_34_

* * *

><p>It was a busy few days. With Mrs Weasley's <em>encouragement<em>, the twins quadrupled their inventory. Maia, aided and encouraged by not only Mrs Weasley but Ailith, Chummy and _Sirius_, surprisingly, completed her cosmetics. She was incredibly proud, when all of her inventions and creations were completed. She had so much fun working on packaging and labelling, the typefaces and colour-schemes, special-effects… It was quite ridiculous, how much she enjoyed it; she had a lot of input on different packaging designs from Chummy, Tonks and Ailith, the twins (expert on product-packaging) and the elder of Chummy's nieces. But it was Sirius' influence that helped her finalise the packaging for her _Hello, Beautiful_ foundation, a compact mimicking a vinyl record, with vintage typeface and a little round mirror in the lid.

The only thing consistent about her packaging designs was that they were _not_ consistent. Different typefaces, different colour-schemes and styles, and themes, different containers—a screw-lid tin for _Drench!_ moisturiser, an _Izze_-inspired bottle for her _Foam Party!_ facial cleanser, jam-jars with pretty cotton bound with ribbon over the lids for her _You Scrub Up Well_ sugar-scrubs, a little pyramid-box for her _La Dorada_ frog-shaped bath-beads, even _Icing on the Cake_ was very unique, the blotting serum solidified into the shape of a vibrant little strawberry with stalk, smelling faintly of poached strawberries and rhubarb. What was consistent about her product-packaging was the _in_consistency—and the flirty nature of the packaging, the _fun_. All of her packaging was witty, clued-in, sassy and _young_, but expertly designed to be far from childish.

She put together a limited-edition sample-set of three 4ml bottles of _The Star Shines_, _Tease_ and _Rum Punch_ for a sample of her liquid highlighters, and Chummy helped her create her idea for _Borealis_ into a reality; the triple-toned highlighting crème stick, with rose-champagne, rose and subtle pale-bronze, blended beautifully, scented with tuberoses; and with Hermione's willing aid as tester, Maia invented _Lion Tamers Wanted_, a strong but delicate serum that tamed even the unruliest hair without heaviness or grease, adding shine and nourishment the hair, with the subtle scent of popcorn and Butterbeer, building on the theme of lion-tamers in a circus.

Maia and the twins worked on the idea of bath-sugars, as well as the twins' joke cake-decorations, and while they developed bath-sugars with different lovely special-effects, Maia used the different scents to create a line of _You Scrub Up Well_ sugar facial-scrubs, not just the core one scented with dark-chocolate, lemon and violet, but a selection of them, catering to the girls' favourite scents—Chummy's, Ailith's, Hermione's, Ginny's, even Mrs Weasley's. They, the bath-sugars and Maia's idea for the fuchsia frog-shaped bath-beads, were very cheap to produce, and very easy to, thus, they made a large inventory of them.

She spent one entire day creating a special line of cosmetics kits to promote alongside her fairytales, each encased in a small unbreakable-glass clutch-purse lined with silk, corresponding to each fairytale, with a tiny charm on the top of each correlating again to the story—a little pearl conch-shell for the Little Mermaid; a bronze wolf for Red Riding Hood; a rose-gold rose with a long stem, on its side, for Beauty and the Beast; a little gold apple for Snow White. She created two new nail-lacquer shades for each fairytale, and a limited-edition _Pucker Up_ lip-crayon, and each set contained an iridescent pink 'First Waltz' _Lip Tar_ she had previously developed, a sample-size pot of _Poppy-Romp_ in 'Bridal Bouquet', and a 4ml sample bottle of _So This is Love_, a pale pink-champagne gold highlighter liquid she had created especially. She loved the fairytale sets—for example, Sleeping Beauty's set, with 'Frozen in Time' _Pucker Up_, a rose-fawn lipstick scented with rose and violets, and two lacquers, 'Beauty Rest', a pale, shimmery cinnamon-rose hue scented with Grand Prix roses, and 'Valiant Prince', a polished chestnut with garnet undertones, scented with sweet chestnut crème. Little Red Riding Hood featured a velvety cherry-crimson lipstick called 'A New Cloak', scented with cherry and violets, the nail-lacquers 'What Big Eyes You Have', violet with plum, silver and amethyst shimmer, scented with violets, narcissus and lily-of-the-valley, and 'Little Red's Hood', a velvety matte-finish scarlet scented with hot-cross buns! The Little Mermaid's set featured a coral-pink _Pucker Up_ called 'Sea Queen' with iridescent turquoise-silver shimmer, and 'Mermaid's Tiara' lacquer, an amber-coral with pearl shimmer, scented with honey and pistachios, and 'Siren Song', a silvery pearl-green lacquer scented with myrtle and jasmine.

Maia also discovered, to great personal hilarity and the amusement of Ginny and Opal, that she could use a Water-Repelling Charm to create a vintage-style shower-cap out of any fabric she wished to use, finishing the hems with fine trims, bows, even fake jewels, and they were so easy to make that she added a huge quantity of them to her growing collection of unique children's book-bags—in shapes like a strawberry and a Snitch, beaded and embroidered—and clutch-purses in different textiles and linings, different shapes; the stain-repelling brush-rolls, little letter-rolls, embroidered handkerchiefs, prettily-trimmed burlap totes, colourful, small suede messenger-bags with different beadwork designs; she even made up some lovely vintage-style dressing-gowns out of beautiful fabrics and trims. The printer also made boxes of any size, design and decoration that they could dream up, and Maia and the twins put together a collection of ten girls' and ten boys' boxes into which they could put a selection of party-favours, to sell to anyone who needed a quick little gift.

Mrs Weasley wanted colouring-books, and so Maia spent a bit of time tracing her original illustrations, creating twelve-page A4 books of rich paper with serrated edges, wrapped in rich matte card printed with her favourite of each story's illustrations, with an alphabet colouring-book with the characters in her stories, which contributed to the designs for some of her special homework-diaries/day-planners. These, with the Quidditch League ones, were added to her stationery collection—Mrs Weasley thought all her designs should be put into print to sell at the festival, as well as cleaned up, edited copies of the workbooks Diane had made for Maia. Mrs Weasley had home-schooled all of her children in reading, writing and maths, and most other magical parents did, too, so she thought Maia's workbooks, carefully structured by a very intellectually articulate woman, would be fantastic to mass-produce.

While a production-line was created to put together pocket-wirelesses, a back-stock of every design Maia had come up with, Maia worked on her two-way journals, delighting in the colourful recycled-leather diaries she had sourced wholesale from the printer, and was also working on her other idea, a Vanishing Box. And with each of her products perfected and packaged, Maia started photographing each of them for a fun owl-order catalogue, using her typewriter for page-layout and design.

One afternoon found Maia and the twins, laden down with baskets full of their products, making their way to the _Witch Weekly_ offices. They were interviewed by one of the Features journalists, their entire inventories photographed with them, and then were allowed to hand out their products and take polls and reviews from people who tried them out. Mrs Weasley escorted them home, beaming with pride that they were going to be featured in her lifelong-_favourite_ magazine.

Maia was still working on the two-way journals, and the Vanishing Boxes, but Mrs Weasley wanted Maia to work on concept-art to be put on posters at the festival, and so that's what Maia did!

* * *

><p>Jack and Ailith worked diligently, recruiting volunteer-entertainers for the festival, ending up with a list of acts any festival-promoter would have been spitting with envy over. Harry and Neville had honed their choices for their birthday-dinner buffet; Maia received another run of <em>Radio Rock<em> garments from the clothing manufacturer; Hermione scoured Muggle bookshops for beautifully-bound classic Muggle novels, storybooks, _Little Miss and Mr Men_ books, a full collection of Beatrix Potter and A.A. Milne books, every author they could think of who deserved a place in the were-school's library, as well as children's books on Muggle history and significant people in Muggle culture.

Ron's only contribution to the planning process was to suggest they sell cones of popcorn in different flavours at the festival, as popcorn was cheap; and he added that there should be chess-tables set up for casual tournaments. Cedric had rather embarrassedly agreed to carry around a donations bucket while he worked as undercover 'security', as had Harry.

She and George had collaborated on invitations for the party, "Presents Mandatory", which they had printed as part of a huge order for product-packaging for both _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ and _Pleiades Inc._; homework-diaries; Maia's stationery designs; _Radio Rock_ posters; badges and flags; Maia's fairytales; copyrighted product-concept posters; colouring books; owl-order forms and the twins' board-games. Due to the size of their order, and because Maia had fallen into a discussion with him over the printing of Diane's workbooks that Maia had tweaked and edited, the printer had sent a letter to Remus, promising the first term's supply of composition-books and other paper products needed for the school, free.

Everyone else involved worked hard to bring about the festival, which took considerably more planning and effort than the boys' birthday-party; by the twenty-ninth of July, the night of the Olympic Opening Ceremony, everyone was ready for a break: dragging cardboard boxes out into the hallway, Maia looked in on the store-room. A very large spare-room on the first-floor by the den had been turned, with the use of deep bookcases, into a storage facility. _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ products dominated one side of the room, _Pleiades Inc._ the other (with clothing rails for the girls' dresses she had made up, Mrs Weasley suggesting other girls might like the dresses Maia had sewn for Opal) while _Radio Rock_ merchandise featured on the far wall, and the First Aid kits were stored in a deep bin in the centre of the room. If they could have opened the doors of Number Twelve to the public, as Fred had said, they'd "be ready to go", because, putting together the storage-room, they had also designed their _displays_.

Maia had had a lot of fun with that, incorporating things like a carousel; a record-player she had Transfigured to a vintage pink-colour; putting her little _Icing on the Cake_ strawberry blotters in amongst fake petit-fours on a tiered cake-stand, inspired by a scene in the _Marie Antoinette _movie; a tin bucket filled with 'ice' in which her bottles of watermelon-pink _Foam Party!_ facial cleanser looked delicious and ready to be drunk; and a miniature, double-sided circus-caravan painted orangey-red-gold with pink and sunflower-yellow details, shelves and six drawers at the bottom for surplus inventory, to host _Lion Tamers Wanted_ and the collections of hair-dye sticks, _Nectar_ hair-gel and the mists she was working on that created special-effects on the hair, like shimmer, pearls and even flowers that lasted up to eight hours, iridescence to top over brightly-coloured hair-dye sticks.

Sirius helped Maia put together an enormous chalkboard, created out of an old dining-table they'd repossessed from the attic, stripped and repainted, giving it a stand and affixing a plain rectangular mirror in the centre after giving the wood several coats of chalkboard paint; the frame they Transfigured for it was painted bright pink, with George using his lovely handwriting to paint '_BEAUTY SCHOOL_: _Get Your Festival Face Here…_' in pale-blue and fuchsia, while Maia painted a 'frame' around the mirror, and moving photographs of her, Ginny, Tonks and Chumley using her cosmetics were glued to the chalkboard, with Maia painting directions beside them, little glass trays of sample testers for each product. She also played on the Olympics by creating a 'podium' for her liquid highlighters; and a 'thermometer' for the baked powders. Mr Weasley's fixation with light-bulbs had led Maia to create a display for her temporary cosmetic transfers, with a two-foot-high, glittering light-bulb on top of a tiered glass spiral display, the light-bulb filled with fairies and three oval mirrors inside, sluggishly revolving, with pots of sample transfers to play with.

They were just a few examples of Maia's displays; but she and the twins had started arranging everything as they would have displays in a shop. So this was how they would organise everything in the joint tent they were going to share; Mrs Weasley had tracked down two second-hand tills that rejected fake coins and counterfeit money-orders.

Sirius had remembered how to use magic to receive Muggle free-view channels, from back when he'd had his own place, and with everything for the party just about ready to get underway first thing in the morning, the entire house stopped to watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony in the den on Maia's enormous television. Maia and the twins were putting together gender-specific goodie-bags and party-crackers, but now, the sense of urgency had lifted.

Opal liked the well-oiled Fijian athlete in his grass-skirt; Hermione loved the timeline of Muggle history including the Industrial Revolution, Maia explaining the reference to William Blake's poetry; and Mr Weasley thought the mechanics behind and the final effect of the Olympic Cauldron was amazing; the twins loved the five firework-rings.

Maia was utterly mortified by the British athletes showing up in white-and-gold _trackies_. With the Italian athletes in their _Armani_ suits, she would have thought that Savile Row would at least have been consulted. Maia finished putting together the last batch of clutch-purse First Aid kits, highly disgusted, and went to bed.

* * *

><p>Neville's birthday dawned, incredibly hot, and, for Maia, very early. They would be spending all of the day and most of the next at the Hobbit-hole, so she and the twins had made a vow to get some work in up in the workshop before they had to set up the last bits for the party. Showering, Maia dressed in slob clothes for the morning, and after an hour in the workshop, bottling <em>Not On My Pillow!<em> makeup-remover, she worked on her two-way communication diaries and Vanishing Boxes, then went downstairs for breakfast, and to help with the last of the food-preparation for the buffet-dinner.

"Morning, dear," Mrs Weasley smiled, pouring a cup of tea for Maia; the twins were already on a full-English, a request from Neville for his birthday breakfast. "Have you been doing some work?" Maia nodded, yawning. "Well, have something to eat, dear; we've got a long day."

"I'm so glad we set up the stage and everything already," George yawned.

"I have _never_ worked so hard than in the last six days," Fred grunted.

"It's done you good," Mrs Weasley said. "And you'd best get used to long days if you're opening your own shop." The twins yawned, ignoring her.

Over the weekend, the others had set everything up at the Hobbit-hole while they worked, aided by Florean, Madam Rosmerta and Ailith, Lance, Bill and Sirius: Maia had never seen a Wizard playground before, but she wished she'd had one growing up; it looked so natural, tucked in a gurgling curve in the stream just below the slope leading to the half-hidden cottage and the orchards; a large slide bore the likeness of a Romanian Longhorn dragon; a small one, a sitting sphinx; a carousel of unicorns (adults and the golden foals), phoenixes and hippogriffs; giant toadstools to climb all over; a tinkling mermaid fountain to splash around under; and a set of monkey-bars in likeness of broomsticks that levitated higher and lower like some sort of _Mario_ _Brothers_ game! There was a golden climbing-apparatus like a great globe, and small model hippogriffs and winged palominos that wheeled and circled a foot above the flower-speckled grass of the meadow; the playground had been set near to a wider curve of the stream so kids could splash about, and nearby the playground, nine shining marble tables for chess had been set out in a grid.

Lance had planned out where the stage would be; the thoroughfare past the foot of the little hidden cottage (with a path lined with streamers to guide visitors coming by Floo past the orchards, past the playground, with the nearby families-only camping section); the location of the food-stalls in relation to the playground and the stage; there was only going to be one stage, at the foot of the deepest slope, which was still a very gentle hill on which people could easily set up camp, with screens throughout the meadow, and there would be a sort of amphitheatre with deep grassy steps carved out of the hill around the stage, on which people could sit with their picnics and watch. But Lance had located the stage so that, no matter where people were, everyone could see it. There were also large canopies protecting shining dance-floors with bandstands, polished bars supplied by Madam Rosmerta, to serve drinks while people danced to live bands. Gold-and-glass speakers were to be stationed around the meadow (the ones in the family-area stifled after 'bedtime'); the same speakers as in the den were to be arranged onstage, and in the playground, at the picnic-tables set out by the food-stalls, the twins' and Maia's marquee, Mal's tent, Madam Rosmerta's pop-up pub, the sweet-shop and Florean's outdoor ice-cream parlour.

They would increase the size of the playground for the festival, and put sets of toilets in each area with shower-stalls in the camping-zones. Ginny had pointed out that actually _they_ didn't own a tent, something they hadn't considered; a large communal tent was going to be put up in one camping-zone, inside which a hundred-odd witches and wizards could roll out sleeping-bags, with circular wash-stations and bathrooms.

This and more was all for the festival; the party was altogether much smaller, but Lance had already done the stage in time for the party to test the speakers, etc., and they were using the party to test out the schematics.

"Maia, if you'd go and get the goodie-bags and the prizes," Mrs Weasley said. "You can go with Fred and George to put up the decorations. Girls, you'll use the Floo Network with Harry and Ron. Neville, your grandmother will be here in twenty minutes, and then we'll see you at the Hobbit-hole at noon." Neville nodded; Maia knew he was going to see his parents this morning, before the party. "Kreacher and I will bring the picnic over then, when we've got everything ready for the buffet."

"Have we got everything?" Fred asked, patting his pockets.

"Check the list," George grunted, finishing off his breakfast. Maia pulled out her journal.

"Brooms—Badminton set—Dean Thomas is bringing a football—fireworks—board-games—sleeping-bags—sun-c ream—Has everyone got their swimming-costumes?"

"And don't forget, all of you, pack your overnight bags," Mrs Weasley said. "Toothbrushes, knickers—"

"Mum, don't say knickers," George said; Maia chuckled.

"And toiletries," Mrs Weasley continued. "Boys, you're bringing a pot of _Redneck-No-More_ just in case. And pillows, don't forget."

"I've got inflatables for the lake," Maia said, checking her little bag, "And a lot of sweets, fruit from the orchards that we can pick at until dinner…"

"Towels," Mrs Weasley said firmly, and Maia snapped her fingers, because she'd forgotten hers. Gathering up the goodie-bags, the prizes and her overnight bag, Maia grabbed her old _Lion King_ beach-towel, checked her list again, and met the twins in the hall. "I'll see you in a bit, dears—and _behave_! I don't want anyone visiting St Mungo's!" The twins exchanged a look with Maia before laughing, and darting down the porch-steps.

"Offer you my arm, Miss Black?" George smirked; Maia grinned, clutching his forearm, and they Disapparated.

* * *

><p>They spent an hour indulging in doing absolutely <em>nothing<em>. They lay down on the grass at the curve of the tinkling stream, savouring being _still_.

"Bloody hard work this week," Fred sighed. Maia, lying close beside George, sighed.

"Bloody hard," she agreed.

"I'm gonna sleep for a _week_ after this," George yawned.

"Can't," Maia murmured, eyes closed, enjoying the burn of the hot sun against her skin, the way the breeze caressed her oh so gently. "Festival's in eighteen days. Have to help."

"Worst is behind us," Fred murmured. "Got more than enough back-inventory to let us step away for a bit, come up with new ideas…"

"Should set some stock aside for Christmas," George yawned. "Can't _believe_ we're going to be in _Witch Weekly_." He gave a slight grimace. Once they'd decided to be interviewed and photographed for _Witch Weekly_, they'd been incredibly enthusiastic; but the fact that their _mother_ read it had gone against the magazine in the twins' eyes. Only Maia agreeing had nudged them in the direction of accepting the offer.

"Maybe you'll win the Most Charming Smile award," Maia sighed gently. She giggled as George pinched her.

"Glad Mum's pushed us, though," Fred said thoughtfully. "Unless we sell out of them at the festival, we have stock to supply any orders for First Aid kits."

"We should make extras," Maia sighed. "Just in case. Dumbledore said he'd put order-forms for them in every student's letter."

"Mm," George grunted softly. "Nice of him…" They lay on the grass for nearly an hour; Maia dozed against George, and when the egg-timer she had set rang, they grumbled, sun-soaked and yawning, but hauled themselves off the ground and got to work. By the time Harry, Ron, Ginny and Hermione let themselves out of the Hobbit-hole, loping over the meadow down to the trickle of stream where they had napped, Maia and the twins had finished decorating the dining-area, the pop-up pub, the path to the camping-area, and were on the stage, Maia breathless with laughter, as the twins tried out some of their best material. Ginny came bounding over, grinning; all four of them bore overnight-bags, sleeping-bags rolled up under their arms; Ginny bore a rolled-up magazine.

"It arrived just before we left!" she grinned, handing the magazine, with two envelopes attached by paper-clips, to Maia. "Mum said I should bring it to show you."

"It's this week's _Witch Weekly_," Maia smiled, detaching the two envelopes, one addressed to her, one addressed to _Messrs F & G Weasley_.

"Oh my _god_," George blurted, his eyes popping. The front-cover of the magazine had just been revealed.

"They _didn't_!" Maia blushed.

"You all look _gorgeous_!" Ron smirked.

"Must be a slow week," Fred remarked. They had made the cover.

Several photographs had been taken in the _Witch Weekly_ office; of the twins, of Maia, of the three of them together, of them with their merchandise. One of the photographs of the three of them together had been used on the front-cover, the twins grinning and chuckling, George's arm slung around Maia's shoulders; she grinned at George, then Fred, saying something that made them both laugh, and beamed at the camera. The twins both wore deep navy shirts; her vibrant red lipstick looked stunning, and she wore one of her handmade dresses, a Fifties dress with a nipped waist, flirty skirt and a boned bodice, white Egyptian cotton embroidered with delicate sprays of flowers, a run-in denim jacket and a grin. The titles of feature articles were printed or scrawled elegantly at the sides of the magazine, the name on the bottom in fuchsia.

"What does the article say?" Ginny asked, and Maia flipped open the magazine. She had to hand it to Thomasina, she was a wonderful writer. She was full of enthusiasm about _Pleiades Inc._ and _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_. The first page in the spread featured another photograph of the three of them, with all of their merchandise, from both companies, spread out in front of them (Maia had thought of sewing up a banner for _Pleiades Inc._ for the festival, and the twins had their mother working on one for _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_). On the following two pages, half the pages were given over to five photos each, the largest of Maia with all of her products, and three small vertical photographs, the last slot filled with two horizontally-arranged photographs, all of examples of her products; the same had been done for the twins, and their interviews spanned onto the next page, which featured more photographs of specific products. There were reviews from _Witch Weekly_ employees who had tried out the products, printed over the photographs and inserted into the text.

The article was _very_ good; Thomasina had asked all the right questions, and they had given honest answers. Thomasina had even made a special mention of the festival on the weekend of the eighteenth, at which _Pleiades Inc._ and _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ would both have stalls. The photographs were flattering, as was Thomasina's confidence in their companies and her enthusiasm over Maia's cosmetics, which had been handed around the office and had everyone bounding around with excitement.

They weren't allowed to sit and bask in their new celebrity; Ginny had been given strict orders by her mother to help, and they had to finish setting up the last few things, completed the decorations on the stage, set up the firework-display for later in the evening, and went to pick muscles at the beach for part of the picnic.

The Hobbit-hole cottage being open for Floo access and toilets, etc., everyone changed into nicer clothes inside in preparation to greet guests: Neville arrived with his grandmother, and the rest of Grimmauld Place turned out to make sure everything was ready. As Sirius had suggested, the kids' friends and Neville's relatives could come in the afternoon with picnics, to set up tents and enjoy the sun, and anyone who suffered the catastrophic ailment of _employment_ could come after their workday was done.

They had gotten confirmations from nearly everyone invited, all except Neville's Great Uncle Algie, who was in Assyria, and Oliver Wood, who had intense training due to the start of the Quidditch League season, and his own father's birthday, but who had sent two tickets for Neville and Harry to go and watch a Puddlemere United game before the end of the summer. Remus had managed to track down the parents of the seven werewolf children still considering sending their children to his were-school and invited them, so Opal was excited to meet other were-babies.

They met Madam Bones' living brother when he dropped off his daughter Susan, who was in the same year as Neville and Harry but a different House, and she lingered shyly beside Cedric, also a Hufflepuff like her, until Cedric's girlfriend, a pretty Asian girl named Cho, arrived with one of Cedric's friends.

They had decorated the old gate into the property, and, yes, it was a bit of a walk from there to the partially-concealed cottage, orchards, veggie-patches and now-deserted hencoop, but Professor Dumbledore had said that the magical protection could only be lifted _at_ the gate, so it was there that the entrance was to be set up for witches and wizards Apparating in, or being dropped off by the Knight Bus or by Portkey, which several members in the Order who worked at the Ministry were setting up for the Saturday of the festival. So it was there at the gate (invisible to Muggles, as was the small dirt path that led off several fields to it, but highly-decorated by Ginny and the twins with streamers, sparklers, balloons and a big banner that read '_Neville and Harry's 15__th__ Bash_') that several of them waited to greet guests.

Having Apparated with his mother from Ireland to his best-friend's house, Seamus Finnigan appeared with tall, Muggle-born Dean Thomas with a _BANG_: the violently-purple triple-decker Knight Bus had dropped off Seamus and Dean, two small brothers, Colin and Dennis Creevey, one of Cedric's friends, and three of the were-children and their parents who were considering sending their children to Remus' school. Opal, ever cheerful, charming and enthusiastic, grabbed them (six-year-old white-blonde Beroe, pretty-eyed eight-year-old Calliope and shy nine-year-old Noah) by the hands and dragged them over to the playground.

With Sirius on the wireless, broadcasting under a small canopy, the floor littered with cushions and records, bottles of Butterbeer and letters, there was a permanent soundtrack of fun music, and the twins' friend Lee Jordan, who had also just passed his Apparition test, became a guest-DJ after he and Sirius had a long discussion about Lee commentating the Hogwarts Quidditch tournament games, wanting to go into radio after Hogwarts. Lee had listened to every single broadcast since Sirius first turned the microphone on, and he proposed that Sirius allow him air-time to broadcast the Hogwarts Quidditch games live, something that had never been done before.

Remus' first-love, Violet, arrived with her three daughters, all of them between eleven and five, and spitting images of their mother, who, as Sirius said when he bounded over to her, "Still has the nicest arse in all of the British Isles!" Violet seemed to be to Sirius what Chummy was to the twins; he hadn't seen her in about sixteen years, but the way they nattered on, laughing loudly and with eyes sparkling, they could have just seen each other the previous day. It was fun to see the way Violet acted around Sirius, and especially Remus when he appeared later in the evening.

"So, are these mini-people yours?" Sirius asked, eyeing the three girls, all of whom were miniature versions of their mother and of their elder sisters, with warmly tanned skin, short thick eyelashes, long sun-streaked hair and sultry eyes the colour of bluebells.

"Actually, they just sort of came with my house," Violet said.

"Cool," Sirius grinned lazily.

"No ankle-biters for you, then," Violet said, rather sadly.

"For which we can be very thankful," Remus smirked.

"I do sort of have a mini-me," Sirius said, with a bright smile. "I'm an _uncle_."

"God, your brother procreated?"

"I know," Sirius sighed. "Did a good job of it, though; left the kid alone to grow up by herself. Nurture rather than Black nature, and all that."

"She took after _your_ nature, then?" Violet smirked.

"Yes she did," Sirius grinned. "In fact, you've been corresponding with her; you recently approved her application for a licence to use the Quidditch League colours."

"Maia Black?" Violet frowned. Her glowing eyes popped, her jaw hanging slightly. "She's _your_ Maia?"

"She is indeed," Sirius grinned lazily, and Maia, who had been eavesdropping while trying not to as she corralled Opal to put some sun-cream on her, glanced over, smiling. "Maia, come over here!"

"_Maia_? Oh!" Upon seeing Maia, Violet's beautiful face lit up with recognition. "_Maia_, yes, of course. The licences for the pocket-wirelesses and those fab nail-products!"

"That's me," Maia smiled, offering her hand. "Hello."

"Lovely to meet you," Violet beamed. "God, she is you, Padfoot."

"Poor girl," Sirius said darkly; one of the little girls, Violet's daughters, giggled softly. "I don't know what you're giggling for," Sirius grinned, glancing down at her. "You're _exactly_ like your mother…wow, how many years ago was it you were the same age?"

"Careful," Violet said warningly, lips twitching. "Padfoot, these are my daughters. My youngest, May; this is Poppy; and Iris starts Hogwarts this September."

"Hello," Sirius grinned. "You lot seen the playground yet? Opal—"

"Come with me!" Opal chirped, dashing over; she grabbed the littlest daughter, May's hand and tugged her away toward the playground to Beroe. Poppy yawned and meandered after them, hands in her pockets, while the eldest, Iris, who must be eleven years old to start Hogwarts, glanced first at her mother, smiled shyly at Sirius and Maia, and then followed.

Chummy arriving not long after Violet and her three daughters, but Chummy did so with all _twenty-six_ of her nieces and nephews (and their assortment of parents). Their arrival really got everyone in the party spirit. Jokingly, Sirius suggested nametags; Maia brought out all the prettiest paper she had in her bag, as well as beads and ribbon, and spent about half an hour putting together personalised cat- and dog-collars for the kids to wear, a fun way to give them all nametags so everyone could keep track, an idea George proposed they utilise henceforth at all Weasley gatherings.

Fred liked the idea of putting the Weasley cousins on a leash.

Sirius' records playing, the playground glittering and shining in the sunlight appealingly, the stream gurgling, it was the perfect atmosphere; the fact that the were-babies were running around screaming with delight when Chummy arrived helped matters, and as all the children rushed about, delighted at seeing each other again, climbing all over George, taking turns with Fred on his broom, paddling in the stream and giggling deliciously as they tried to see who could get highest on the swings, flirting with Harry and climbing onto the chess tables to challenge Ron for his pocket-money, everyone else got in the mood.

It helped too that the weather was perfect; a warm breeze played with their hair, and the sunlight sparkled off the clear stream; the scent of brine subtly carried from the sea, mingling with the tangible scent of ripe plums, cherries and honey, and the bees buzzed softly as they hovered across the meadows, gathering pollen, and the sky was a blazing rich forget-me-not, not a cloud anywhere.

* * *

><p>At noon, Mrs Weasley, Kreacher, Cedric and the Lovetts appeared; they come bearing baskets full of a splendiferous picnic. When everyone had put up their tents in the camping-designated area strung with streamers and colourful bunting, slathered their kids with sun-cream and spread out blankets (or sleeping-bags) on the carved grassy ridges around the stage, bringing out picnic-baskets, it was decided that Sirius' broadcast didn't suffice as entertainment, and the twins got up onstage, "testing the speakers", and put on a double-act that had even the grumpiest of Neville's wizened relatives creaking with laughter.<p>

The twins were a _huge_ hit. George seemed to be the especial favourite of a lot of the children; they clamoured for his attention, Chummy's lot showing him photographs of the results of their using his inventions, and he had them writhing with giggles as they danced to Sirius' choices of music; throughout the afternoon, the twins slipped their products in unsuspecting kids' treats or drinks, and it was always taken in the good fun with which it was intended; they played Quidditch, using fruit, making the kids shriek with laughter as apples exploded everywhere; and a trunk of toys and costumes had them playing make-believe, led by Opal of course; everyone changed into their swimming-costumes to splash about in the stream and the lake.

The adults had no less a wonderful time than the kids; those afflicted with the Bite or who also had werewolf children chatted with Chummy's numerous siblings and in-laws, and Maia liked to think they were coming around to realising that, despite being afflicted with lycanthropy, the other children were just that—children. Neville's relatives were much like Mrs Longbottom, although a few glasses of Maia's cider had a few of them becoming the life of the party, entertaining the kids (_including_ the twins) with stories, dancing, telling jokes that had Fred sobbing; and those from the Order who could get off work before five mingled with Remus' werewolf contacts, whom he had invited all of. Several of the older witches bore copies of _Witch Weekly_ and Maia and the twins spent a good bit of time during the picnic chatting about their companies, and, as Mrs Weasley had predicted, Maia had to bring out examples of all her products for interested parties to examine.

Ted Tonks brought _tiddlywinks_. This game, one of Ted's favourites as a boy, kept several of the children entertained and giggling for quite some time: it was a sight to see the nine marble tables intended for chess actually dominated by a tiddlywinks tournament, little kids kneeling up on the stools with their tongues poking out in concentration; the twins' board-game brought out and joke-jinxing the unsuspecting player; a _Jenga_ tower and a _Scrabble_ board were set out with a game of _Chopsticks_ and dominoes; a Gobstones tournament went on in the grass nearby, the air punctuated by laughter and squeals of disgust as opponents were doused with foul-smelling liquid; Boule and tenpins lanes were set out, much to Professor Dumbledore's delight when he arrived bearing two wrapped presents to add to the two tables mounded with gifts for Harry and Neville.

The very low, polished little round tables set out under a colourful silk marquee with floor-cushions, adjacent to the playground and chess-tables, were the centre of all things 'quiet' and artistic; with a colouring-competition keeping a dozen of the kids quiet for a little while; with a bin full of children's books to read; hammocks set out for naps (these were met with general delight, though George claimed his had developed a 'fault' when he couldn't get in one) and the ever-useful bathroom. Sirius had also set up his projector, and the House had voted on which _Disney_ films would be best to play; _Lilo & Stitch_, _The Lion King_ and _The_ _Little Mermaid_ were chosen, and played one after the other for anyone who wanted to watch them, sitting on little floor-cushions and munching on little parchment cones of popcorn.

Mrs Weasley, an aficionado at hosting children's parties, had also provided numerous dishes of icing, sprinkles and sweets with which the kids could decorate fairy-cakes and shortbread biscuits, (the twins slipped their own invented cake-decorations in amongst them, to hilarious results) until such time as Florean appeared with vats of ice-cream to create sundaes, cones, floats and ice-lollies.

A small circular golden fountain was located in the centre of a ring of little low circular tables, at which colourful miniature chairs were set for kids to eat at; the fountain gave forth, not water, or even Butterbeer, but Florean's most beloved ice-cream flavours; other little sparkling spigots dispensed sweets, syrups and nuts depending on which knob was turned, and it was funny to see Neville's elderly relatives fighting little children to get to it!

The twins and Maia had set up party-games for when the kids started to flag, as was inevitable: Pass-the-Parcel was of course a classic, and Sirius took great delight in tickling the little kids during Musical Statues; Fred decided he was much too old to keep dropping to the ground and hopping up for Sleeping Dragons, rubbing his hip; but _everyone_ got giggly and played Pass-the-Balloon, which then turned into Butterfly Balloons using jumbo-sized golden nets to catch dragon- and Snitch-shaped balloons the twins had invented; Hermione, Maia, Ted and Dean were leaders for these 'Muggle' games, including a game of football led by Dean which had the littlest, most enthusiastic children swarming around the ball like bees, but everyone knew Pin the Tail on the Hippogriff and Kneazle, Kneazle, Nogtail!—which had George pelting after a giggling Maia all over the playground.

The twins took over 'Circe Says', playfully telling kids off for giggling over the absurd things they tried to get them to do, causing more laughter; several children found themselves tossed unceremoniously into the stream, coming up spluttering and giggling; and the twins and Maia had set up a sort of treasure-hunt all through the stream, the meadow and playground, the orchards and vegetable-patch. They had to find golden eggs, each of which contained a puzzle they had to figure out, and the one who had the most right answers on their sheet of paper won the big prize. Wary of the tantrums and tears caused at large Weasley-family birthday parties when one or another child had gone without a prize, Mrs Weasley had wisely ensured that small prizes of sweets were given out throughout the day, while the 'big' prizes were tributes from _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ and _Pleiades Inc._.

There were, of course, still the usual tears and tantrums that could be associated with any party at which children were in attendance; grazed knees and not wanting to get out of the stream, so and so getting the better prize or the unfairness of someone being bigger than them, but several things were added to Maia's journal over the course of the day, ideas for new products and things for the festival, including a mock Triwizard Tournament for the little kids, who sat, enthralled, listening to Harry and Cedric talk about the three Tasks; different things to add to the playground, including a slide _in_ the stream. The 'quiet' tent in which the kids read and coloured and decorated cakes also featured an addition that developed over the course of the afternoon and early-evening, a crèche for babies under three, watched over by Kreacher so the adults could enjoy a drink and a chat.

A miniature stage was created by Sirius, Chummy and the twins, fully decorated, with two painted sets of little steps either side and spangled purple curtains, at which the kids put on an impromptu talent-show. Colourful deck-chairs were set up around it, and the talent-show was met with raucous laughter and cheers. It was during this display of childhood innocence and confidence that most of the adult guests arrived, having changed out of their work-robes into wonderful examples of Wizard party-clothes; Bill looked even more the part of a lead-singer, and Tonks, wearing a short dress, ombre brunette waves and tall turquoise dragon-hide boots, was told off rather resignedly by Andromeda, who looked like she'd long since realised Tonks wouldn't listen to a word she said about the length of Tonks' skirts but couldn't break the habit. Mr Weasley arrived with Remus, as part of a line of guests wandering down the fairy-lit, streamer-strewn pathway from the gate.

Maia, helping to mediate a small argument between five of Chummy's lot, Opal, Calliope, Tootles (another were-boy whose nickname had been earned due to his love of marbles, like Tootles in _Hook_), May, and the wizened Longbottom relative who had apparently used up the last of the chocolate Snapping Sprinkles at the ice-cream fountain, saw Mr Weasley, recognisable due to his thinning flame-red hair and horn-rimmed glasses flashing in the dying sun and the glowing golden bubbles that floated everywhere with jam-jars filled with fairies, the glowing, glittering streamers and the _Wildfire Whiz-Bang_ fireworks that went off sporadically as two of Chummy's nephews experimented with their games prizes, hand something to Hermione, Ron and Cedric, who were all chatting to Susan, Cho and Cedric's friends, Lee and Seamus Finnigan (Dean was teaching two more of Chummy's nephews how to bounce a football on their knees) before Ron detached himself from the group and went over to Harry, who was trying to stop Kelly, one of Chummy's fierier nine-year-old nieces, from shoving his stolen wand up Basil Longbottom's nostril.

"Booklists arrived today!" Ron said, and handed Maia a thick parchment envelope addressed in emerald ink, sealed with scarlet wax, the crest the Hogwarts seal. "Dad said he'd bring 'em tonight, he expects we'd want to read them now."

There were four pieces of stationery inside the envelope; one, telling Maia she had been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which she would reach via transportation called the 'Hogwarts Express', a ticket for which gave information that the train departed from Kings Cross Station, Platform 9 & ¾ at Eleven A.M. on the 1st of September. The third piece of paper was a list of all books and equipment Maia would need for the coming year—it seemed Maia's letter had been tailored to where she hoped to progress by the first of September; despite technically being a first year (she made a note that she was allowed a cat OR a rat OR a toad), because her course material was all for O.W.L.-level study, and they included volumes for Arithmancy, Ancient Runes and Astronomy at N.E.W.T.-level. The last piece of paper was the same size as the letters, but colourful, of thicker card, and bearing the details for the First Aid kits.

"Only one new one," Ron said, as Harry tore open his own letter. "_The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Five_, by Miranda Goshawk."

"Notice anything missing?" Fred said conversationally, as he and George strode over, each with their own letters, their eyes twinkling; Maia saw the First Aid kit order-form in George's hand.

"From what?"

"The booklists," George said, tweaking an eyebrow.

"Nothing for Defence Against the Dark Arts," Harry said thoughtfully.

"We overheard Mum and Dad talking on the Extendable Ears a while back; Dumbledore's having real trouble finding another teacher to do the job this year," Fred said.

"Not surprising, is it, when you look at what's happened to the last four," George said thoughtfully.

Harry frowned, ticking off his fingers, "One dead; one's memory removed; one resigned; one locked in a trunk for nine months. Yeah…I see what you mean."

"What've you got there?" Sirius asked, meandering over; he still wore his silver-rimmed sunglasses, though the sun was beginning to set past the woods, and in his leather trousers, black shirt open at the throat, curly hair shining, holding a pint of lager, he looked the _epitome_ of cool, handsome, irreverent.

"Our booklists from Hogwarts," George said. Sirius reached for Maia's, a smile lingering at his lips as he looked over the set-texts.

"They've got you down for O.W.L.-year," he said softly, smiling a little proudly. "And three N.E.W.T. classes!"

"I suppose with all the work I'm doing this summer, Professor Dumbledore must think I'll be caught up to fifth-year by September," Maia said.

"Caught up? Maia, you already surpass N.E.W.T.," George said, laughing.

"What's this?" Sirius murmured; as several adults came over, curious what they were all carrying in their hands, he pulled out the First Aid kit order-form. "Oh, they included the order-forms. _Fantastic_!"

"What's this?" The order-form was passed around; everyone agreed it looked highly professional as well as fun, and someone brought out their wand and tapped the order-form, producing copies. Several people pocketed them, and George's eyes twinkled as he grinned at Maia from the corner of his eye.

"What's up with you, Ron?" Sirius asked suddenly, and Maia glanced up. Ron didn't answer; he was standing, still gaping at his own letter.

"What's the matter?" Fred asked impatiently, and strode over to look over Ron's shoulder. Fred's mouth fell open too. "Prefect? _Prefect_?!" George leapt forward, seized Ron's envelope and turned it over in his hand. Something gold glinted as it fell into George's palm.

"No _way_!" George said in a hushed voice.

"There's been a mistake!" Fred said, snatching the letter from Ron and holding it up to a levitating jam-jar filled with fairies, as if to check for a watermark. "No one in their right mind would make _Ron_ a prefect!" The twins' heads turned in unison, and they both stared at Harry, who looked a little taken-aback.

"We thought _you_ were a cert!" Fred said, his tone rather accusatory, as if Harry had tricked them in some way.

"We thought Dumbledore was _bound_ to pick you," George said indignantly.

"Winning the Triwizard and everything?!"

"I suppose all the mad stuff must've counted against him," George said, glancing at Fred.

"Yeah," Fred said slowly. "Yeah, you've caused too much trouble, mate! Well, at least one of you's got their priorities right." Fred strode over to Harry, clapped him on the back, and gave Ron a scathing look.

"_Prefect_. Ickle Ronnie the Prefect. Ooh, Mum's going to be _revolting_," George groaned, thrusting the badge back at Ron, as if it might contaminate him. Glancing at Harry, as Ron passed him the badge, Maia thought there was something…off, something…_tight_ about his smile. He looked as if he'd received a rather nasty surprise.

A shriek echoed across the meadow; Hermione came tearing into view, her hair flying, a letter clutched in her hand. She clocked Harry, the golden badge glinting in the dying sunlight. "Did you—did you get—? _I knew it_! Me too, Harry, me too!"

"No!" Harry said quickly, giving the badge back to Ron. "It's Ron, not me."

"It—_what_?"

"Ron's prefect, not me," Harry repeated.

"Ron?" Hermione said, her jaw dropping. "But—are you sure—I mean…?" She blushed deeply.

"It's my name on the letter," Ron said defiantly, frowning at her.

"I… I, well, _wow_, well done, Ron! That's really—"

"_Unexpected_," George nodded, staring grimly at Ron with his arms folded across his chest, mirroring Fred's stance perfectly.

"No!" Hermione blushed. "No, it's not—Ron's done loads of—He's really—"

"Everyone having fun over here?" Mrs Weasley asked; she looked happier than Maia had seen her in weeks. The success of the party, and a little tipple of Maia's cider and Mrs Weasley was an amazingly gracious hostess, giggling with the younger girls about love-potions she'd made as a teenager, chatting with the older witches. "Arthur said he brought your booklists over, boys, have you got them?"

"Yeah. We got them," Fred said darkly, eyeing Ron scathingly again. Maia knew the twins' position on the likes of Mr Filch and Professor Snape at Hogwarts, and she knew their political opinions regarding the ultra-Conservative, rather regressive and extremely prejudiced Ministry, but until now she hadn't heard they had any particular disdain or open hatred for school-prefects.

"Perhaps you can go to Diagon Alley tomorrow to get your new books and things," Mrs Weasley smiled. "That way we won't be in a rush at the end of the summer. Ron, I'll give you a little extra money, you need new pyjamas; yours are at least five inches too short, I can't believe how fast you're growing!"

"You should get red and gold pyjamas," George smirked, "to match your _badge_."

"Match his what?" Mrs Weasley asked, sipping her little glass of cider.

"His _badge_," Fred grimaced, as if getting the worst over with quickly. "His lovely shiny new prefect's _badge_."

Fred's words took a minute to penetrate Mrs Weasley's cider-buzzed mind. "His…but… _Ron_, you're not—?" Ron held up his badge. The cider went flying as Mrs Weasley shrieked.

"I don't believe it! I don't believe it! Oh, Ron! How wonderful! A prefect! That's everyone in the family!" Mrs Weasley beamed.

"What are Fred and I, next-door neighbours?" George asked indignantly, grunting as his mother shoved him out of the way to get to Ron, whom she grabbed in what looked like a bone-crunching hug, embarrassing Ron all the more in front of onlookers by kissing every part of her face she could reach.

"Go and tell your father, Ron! I'm so _proud_ of you! What _wonderful _news! You could end up Head Boy, just like Bill and Percy!" Mrs Weasley beamed. "It's the first step! And to find out _today_, I'm just _thrilled_! Oh _Ronnie_."

Fred and George both made loud retching noises; if they could, Maia would have bet the twins would have downed Puking Pastilles to add to the effect, but their reaction, and everyone else's laughter at Ron's embarrassment, seemed to be more than enough for the twins; Mrs Weasley ignored them anyway. Arms tight around Ron's neck, she was still kissing his face. The twins exchanged looks.

"You don't mind if we _don't_ kiss you, do you, Ron?"

"We could curtsy, if you like," George said.

"Oh, shut up… Mum, don't—Mum…get a grip!" Ron mumbled, trying to push her away; instead of letting him alone, Mrs Weasley grabbed Ron's arm and dragged him across the meadow, beaming, "Little Ronnie, a _prefect_! A prefect! Oh, I'm all of a dither!" over to where Mr Weasley was talking with a few wizards who were enjoying a smoke out in front of Madam Rosmerta's pop-up pub, the polished bar shining in the light of streamers strung up above the line of liquor bottles and glinting glasses.

"_Ron_, a _prefect_," Fred snorted, frowning.

"You know what, I'd _love_ to see him try and put us in detention," George said thoughtfully, eyes on Ron, who was being hugged by a jubilant-looking Mr Weasley, who rung his hand and beamed.

"He could, if you don't watch out!" Hermione said angrily.

Fred and George burst out laughing; Maia's lips twitched, and Harry smiled.

"We're gonna have to watch our step, George," Fred said, pretending to tremble. "With Prefect Hermione on our case."

"Yeah," George sighed. "It looks like our lawbreaking days are finally over!"

"Oh, come on, this isn't exactly a Shakespearean tragedy," Maia said, glancing at the twins.

"Oh yeah?"

"I think I'm going to have to retire to a darkened room for days… The _shame_ of it… We're _never_ going to live this down. _Ron_, a prefect!"

"Brought disgrace on the family, he has… Imagine wanting to make _Ron_ a prefect. McGonagall must've been Confunded."

"What've you got against prefects, anyway?" Maia asked curiously. The twins shrugged.

"Do Muggles have prefects at school?" Sirius asked curiously; Maia nodded, glancing at him.

"Yes. I was prefect for my form," she said, and the twins turned as one to gape at her, horrified.

"You…"

"You were…"

"You were a _prefect_?" George gaped, looking completely and utterly appalled. Maia shrugged.

"I was."

"_You_ were a _prefect_," Fred choked, looking like he was about to throw up. "To _think_ we _knew you_!"

"You've been…lying to us from the beginning?" George half-whispered.

"In my defence," Maia sighed, half amused but a little disgruntled by their behaviour; so what if she was a prefect? "I was the prefect who also magically erased the questions from our exam-papers, on more than one occasion." Sirius barked a laugh, and several others chortled. George looked much more forgiving of her past-life. She walked up to him, resting her hands on his shoulders. "I'm a different person now, Georgie…" Several people chuckled.

He blinked several times, his eyes growing warm, flicking over her face thoughtfully. "That's true…"

"I didn't mean to keep secrets."

"Bloody big one to keep," he murmured, eyes wide as he gazed down at her. She rolled her eyes.

"So what if I was a prefect?" she smiled. "I got to stop the younger kids from being bullied. And I got a special red-and-gold cord on the lapels of my school-blazer."

"Red and gold?" George asked, and Maia nodded.

"They were the school colours," she said.

"Gryffindor colours," George said softly, gazing at her.

"Excuse me, you're _fraternising_ with the enemy!" Fred said loudly, scowling. Maia rolled her eyes, sighing.

"Fred, you know, you should really be more pragmatic about this," she said sternly, a hand on her hip.

"Pragmatic my arse!"

Maia twitched one eyebrow, and Fred bit his lip. "You could at least _stop_ being disdainful for long enough to realise you've got someone _on the inside_."

Maia's words took a second to register, and then Fred's features illuminated.

"That's right… He could tip us off… He's far more afraid of us than he is Hermione—"

"I beg your pardon!" Hermione scowled. "Ron certainly isn't going to _tip you off_ to prevent you getting in trouble, especially since you'll most likely deserve it."

"'Most likely'? _Absolutely_," Fred smirked.

"Hope you're ready for the responsibility of the position, Hermione," George said, grinning at her. Hermione's eyebrows rose, and Sirius snorted, wandering off. The fact that Maia had been a school prefect had somehow opened the twins' eyes to the fact that she wasn't exactly like them in every respect; she didn't flout authority…intentionally…and she didn't go about jinxing people for the hell of it, as the girls on the Gryffindor Quidditch team said the twins did. Fred seemed utterly disdainful of his being associated with a school-prefect without his knowledge or consent, but George didn't seem to mind, really. And anyway, when she'd finished telling him about all the magical mischief she'd caused since primary-school, she was more than forgiven.

And, as she had said, she _was_ a different person now. So much had happened this summer that she could never go back to the girl she had been at Muggle secondary-school, with her turning her hair turquoise and erasing exam-papers without thinking and going home alone every day because Muggles were deflected from the Hobbit-hole park, who wasn't confident in herself as a witch because she'd had no education.

Ron's and Hermione's new prefect-hood wasn't the only bit of dubiously-good news the party received: receiving his own letter, Cedric had hastily tried to hide it, his cheeks a bit pink—and, sensing embarrassment like a dog smells fear, Fred had pounced.

Cedric had been named Head Boy.

Cedric didn't make a big deal of it, but, like Mrs Weasley, Cedric's father seemed about to burst at the seams with pride.

So that the adults could get the buffet table spread out ready for the evening-meal, and the others could get the night-time decorations sorted, George had all the kids sitting on the dance-floor in a circle, while he blew bubbles for them; they drifted in the air like tiny firework-displays.

Much like the crèche, the dance-floor that spread out between the playground and the food tents and polished dining-tables under a high marquee was created out of necessity over the course of the day, a large, flat circular dance-floor conjured out of polished wood, with sparkling streamers and pretty bunting trailing from a sprawling gold chandelier levitating twenty feet in the air, filled with real, glittering fairies.

Maia, who had been making sure people had drinks and anything they needed, all while still having an amazingly fun afternoon and filling _seventeen_ rolls of film with three different cameras, went around, helping to illuminate the path back to the camping-area, the streamers sparkling like starlight in the glorious sunset; Maia illuminated the enormous oak that had been a permanent fixture in her life, with its swing, the ancient roots gnarled and twisted beautifully as they reached for the edge of the lake; she, Fred and George had strung the branches with streamers and lanterns, so that, when it was illuminated, glittering and sparkling in the sunset, it looked like a giant Christmas-tree.

A horseshoe-shaped table was spread with a tablecloth and scattered with jam-jars of conjured posies of flowers, and fairies, which also glittered on the candelabra scattered along the table; bunting and streamers had been draped above it, levitating in midair, and _photographs_ were hanging from them. Photographs of Neville and Harry through their Hogwarts years; there were more of Neville from childhood, but someone had slipped baby-photos of Harry in. Maia suspected the photographs had been Mrs Weasley's idea, as she got a little misty-eyed seeing a picture of a toddler-Harry zooming around on a broomstick, frightening the life out of a cat.

As soon as the buffet was spread out, Mrs Weasley flicked her wand, and the polished round tables under the marquee loaded themselves with shimmering gold linen tablecloths, posies of wildflowers, levitating glass baubles filled with fairies, sparkling glasses, plain crockery laid with Gryffindor-scarlet cloth napkins, on which a _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes (in Partnership With Pleiades Inc.)_ party_-_cracker was placed. Handfuls of gem-shaped bottles of bubbles were scattered about with lion- and Snitch-shaped golden and scarlet confetti, and the low children's tables, each of them decorated with jam-jars of flowers and levitating fairy-baubles, were covered with paper tablecloths with pots of crayons and coloured-pencils; colouring-pages were placed at each setting, with stickers and _Jenga_ towers to keep them entertained.

The buffet consisted of every nice thing Neville and Harry could think of, their 'desert-island' food picks; and it seemed as if Mrs Weasley, Maia and Kreacher had spent weeks cooking, but they hadn't. Magic was a _marvel_ when it came to cooking. They could do so much after buying so little; they had used fresh vegetables from the veggie-patch, fruit from the orchards, and bought meat in Diagon Alley, but magic had been used, and the few ingredients they had bought had stretched to creating a _feast_.

Vats of summer-minestrone and white-asparagus soup; fragrant vegetable curry; gorgeous goulash; stuffed chicken; sausages; four different kinds of potato dishes; Swedish meatballs; honey-rosemary carrots (Neville's especial favourite); dishes of fresh salmon, beautifully cooked, or trout with fennel and lemon; duck confit with Puy lentils; quiches; macaroni-cheese; coq au vin skewers; steak; over a half-dozen different kinds of salads (duck-raspberry-endive; beetroot; carrot-and-apple; hot-and-cold root salad with goat's cheese; Nicoise; Greek); chicken kebabs with avocado dip; shredded lamb wraps with pomegranate-seeds; stuffed bell-peppers and ratatouille-topped aubergines; steaming dishes of fresh vegetables, including shelled peas, runner-beans and broad-beans dripping in butter; garlic-and-wine sautéed artichokes; moussaka; chipolatas and freshly-made fishcakes for the children with hand-cut chips cooked in _lard_. A loaf of fresh bread was put on every table, with a bottle of elf-made wine or Butterbeer and a large carafe of iced water and another of cordial.

"Alright, alright, alright!" When everyone had sat down with plates _groaning_ with food, sipping wine and laughing, Sirius stood up on his chair. Everyone turned to gaze at him; behind him hung two banners; '_Happy 15__th__ Birthday, Neville and Harry!_' read the first, Maia and the twins having gone at it with decorating-charms so that it sparkled and glowed and pulsated with light like a firework-display. The second was smaller, hanging just beneath, '_Congratulations, Cedric, Hogwarts Head Boy. Congratulations, Ron and Hermione, new Gryffindor prefects_!' This had been an addition made by the joint efforts of Mrs Weasley and Mr Diggory. "Everyone shut up!"

A few giggles from the children's tables, at which highchairs had been set up for the older of little babies, and someone let off a Wildfire Whiz-Bang; he gave them a look, and more giggles came, but Sirius grinned.

"I hope everyone's having as wonderful a time as I am!" A roar of approval met his words, and he grinned. "Excellent! As you all know, we decided to use the birthdays of Harry and Neville—" another cheer, people raising their glasses "—to test-run a music-festival in two weekends' time! I'm very glad you all consented to join us this fine evening, and when you're all a bit more liquored up I'll come and get your _honest_ opinions about the whole thing!" Everyone laughed, and so did Maia, leaning against the back of her spindly gold chair, gazing at her uncle.

"Not wanting to keep you from your dinners—or your glasses—I'll keep this short," Sirius grinned, and several people laughed and raised their glasses again. "The last time I attended a birthday-party for Neville and Harry was fourteen years ago. Yep." He grimaced, probably feeling his age. "It was another joint-party, and many of you won't know this, but it was actually held here—well, not here," he gestured around the glowing, glittering marquee. "The Big House, over the way, was decked out for a celebration. Back then we took the opportunity to celebrate anything properly, if we had occasion to.

"Neville and Harry were, of course, the guests of honour at this party; it was their _first_ birthday, and it was wartime, so everyone did their best to make things absolutely fantastic!" Sirius grinned. "Presents were mandatory—I myself provided a toy broomstick that had Lily having an aneurysm every time Harry whizzed past—and there was, of course, a cake."

Remus chuckled, a knowing smile glowing on his face; he looked younger, happier and more handsome than Maia had ever seen him, his face bathed in candle- and fairy-light, sipping wine and sharing a table with Tonks, Lance and several others.

"This cake was…_amazing_. Livia de Lusignan had made it—that's your grandmother, Maia—and it was well, in the shape of a _dragon_," Sirius grinned. "I mean, no ordinary dragon; it was made of red and gold chocolate icing. So, the boys go tearing through presents—with some help," Sirius added, adjusting his sunglasses with a smirk, and eyeing Maia, flashing a grin, "and this cake is set in front of them.

"_Someone_," Sirius said, and he grinned, "suggested Harry put his face in it. So, of course…he _did_." Laughter rang around the marquee. Harry looked a little flushed, but his eyes were twinkling, gazing at Sirius, probably drinking in every single detail he could about the only birthday-party he had ever had as a child. The only one when his parents had been alive.

"Neville followed suit," Sirius grinned, "and little poppet Maia, who would have been approaching her second birthday at the time, decided to start helping herself to the cake before it was fully demolished. While everyone else grabbed whatever slices they could get out of the remaining cake, the kids were taken upstairs to have a _bath_."

Remus was now giggling. "You _didn't_!"

"Later on, this photograph was the source of _great_ delight to any who saw it," Sirius grinned mischievously. "_I_ certainly laughed my arse off, and I had always planned to unveil it at some enormously public event." He raised his glass, grinning. "A wedding, a leaving-do from Hogwarts, perhaps. But I thought today would be as good a time as any. So, Neville, Harry—_happy birthday_!"

He flicked his wand, and an enormous photograph appeared, blocking out the two banners, and making Harry's jaw drop in horror as the crowd inside the marquee laughed and cheered.

A colourful Wizard photograph had been taken of two bright-eyed little baby boys, both of them wearing very fun party-hats, faces smeared with chocolate, and standing completely _naked_ in a magical-bubble-filled bathtub, while a little curly-haired girl of no older than two, also nude except for a glittering party-hat, giggled and encouraged them to shimmy a little dance; baby-Harry wiggled his bottom, baby-Neville giggled deliciously, his happy round face lighting up, and baby-Maia shot a mischievous smile at the cameraman, odd eyes glowing, cheek dimpling, as she bent to splash the water, encouraging Neville to stamp his feet so the sparkly water splashed everywhere.

Maia clapped a hand to her glowing face; embarrass the three of them in one fell swoop; he was _good_.

"_Aw_," the crowd giggled, while Neville turned red as a beetroot, grinning through his embarrassment, and Harry sank in his chair, shaking his head.

"You're such a _cute_ wittle baby!" George cooed, reaching out to pinch Maia's cheek playfully. "_Love_ the hat." Maia rolled her eyes, grinning.

"Happy birthday!" Sirius grinned, raising his glass again, and everyone raised their glasses to toast the birthday-boys as Sirius climbed back off his chair. Fred was giggling madly.

"I also want to say, too, congratulations to Ron and Hermione, new Gryffindor prefects," Sirius said, raising his glass. "And to Cedric, new Hogwarts Head Boy. I suppose, Albus, you think they've all got a pretty good handle on deflecting minor to major hexes and jinxes?" Professor Dumbledore's beard and hair were glowing silver in the light of the fairies, candles and glowing golden bubbles, and he raised his glass of elf-made wine, winking.

"_Crackers_!" someone blurted, and Maia glanced down, beaming, as she reached for hers; with a _BANG_ and a cloud of shimmering gold gas that smelled of treacle-tart—Harry's favourite pudding—the contents sprang out; a Fainting Fancy, Chinese Fireball stickers, a child-approved joke, a _teeny_ screw-top bottle of scented ink, a matchbook of seeds for Fanged Geraniums and a _hat_. Maia's was a ridiculously tall Continental hennin complete with trailing diaphanous veil spangled with tiny gems, and crowned with sparkling, glowing gold tinsel. She popped it on, grinning, as George donned a Hatter-inspired top-hat of turquoise lace, peacock velvet, sunflower satin ribbon and an enormous fuchsia ostrich-plume.

The noise level started to rise, everyone gathered in one place not scattered about the meadow; cameras levitated around the marquee, taking photographs, and when Maia had eaten her fill of savoury foods, she went around with her cameras, taking a lot of photographs and letting the excited kids at the little tables show her their party-hats, the contents of their crackers, the things they'd coloured in or drawn on the paper tablecloth. One of Chummy's more pragmatic nephews had somehow gained a cache of party-cracker fillings, and was in the process of selling them to the other kids who wanted specific items but couldn't find anybody to trade with.

"That's _extortion_, Drogo!"

"Bloody good idea, though," Fred grinned, stopping on his way back to their table with a second plateful of food, eyeing the cache of toys and presents Drogo had collected.

Real sweets in little vellum parcels; draw-on moustaches; stickers; miniature colouring-pages (fairytale and animal); joke-cosmetics; joke-sweets (the ones that spurted daffodils from the nose had already been a big hit); joke-jewellery (the necklaces turned the wearer's eyebrows turquoise and sprout an excessive amount of nostril-hair in ringlets, the bracelets made the wearer cluck like a chicken when attempting speech); pretty little flower hair-accessories; joke-toothpaste; and mini reusable noughts-and-crosses boards, barely an inch and a half big, of polished wood in contrasting colours, with the pieces configured to look like curled-up glowing crimson dragons and 'dead' gold people lying spread-eagled; and _Wee Mouse in a Tin House_, a little felt mouse in a mints-tin with a little blanket, pillow and teddy-bear; bowties Maia had sewn that the twins had had a go with, making them glow-in-the-dark, or blinding to look at with various glowing, sparkling charms, or sing a ballad lustily; pretty little drawstring bags; two Puffskeins; non-joke jewellery, bracelets Maia had made, some with beads, some without; acorn-owl craft kits; 'bedtime-passes' that needed authenticating by their parents, authorising the kids to stay up twenty minutes later; a set of edible papers and paints; nail-wraps; sample-size bottles of nail-lacquer and flavoured lip-gloss; and Maia's sweetest little petit-fours.

"Remember doing the same thing at Weasley parties," Fred added, grinning.

"Drogo, you ever need a summer-job, stop by _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_," George grinned, clapping nine-year-old Drogo on the back with a wink.

"Admire your moxie," Fred agreed, nodding.

"Best dole the presents out, though," George remarked in a low tone, eyeing the other kids, some of who were pouting and glaring tearfully at Drogo, "they're beginning to _organise_. Never underestimate a child." Drogo reluctantly handed the presents out, of course, keeping the ones he deemed best for himself.

When they had eaten their second plates of dinner, the twins joined Maia as she made the rounds, especially around the kids' tables; the twins both had clipboards out, deep in discussion with each tableful of kids, nodding seriously and jotting down notes while each child clamoured to have their voice heard; Maia did 'market-research' too, asking first the kids what they liked about the flavoured lip-gloss, the sample-size bottles of nail-lacquer, the nail-wraps and (non-jinxed) bracelets, and then went to the older set of kids, the teenagers who were all heartily enjoying themselves; she took her notes in her journal, which she'd been filling all day with ideas and a lot of hilarious one-liners some of the kids had come up with, the altered 'rules' for _Scrabble_ and the results of the Tiddlywinks contest, and stopping by each table, she got peoples' opinions on the products she had contributed to the party-crackers, as the twins did also with theirs.

She had come up with several ideas, especially for kids; miniature children's versions of her fairytales, the text simplified to Beatrix Potter and A.A. Milne standards, with a few smaller illustrations, paperback books about the same size as _Mr Men_ books; _paper dolls_—she didn't know how she hadn't thought of that before, but that gem had come from Chummy's seven-year-old niece Lavinia, and Maia had promised to produce them by Christmas—"to pass on to Father Christmas".

"Why won't Father Christmas make them?"

"Well, he's got six _billion_ people to make presents for," Maia sighed, "admittedly, not all those six billion are Christian and in fact celebrate Christmas, so that's probably a bit of a relief for him, but still, cut the old man a break! I think he's earned the right to ask for a little help!"

"And be sure you tell Father Christmas you'd like stuff from _Weasleys' Wizards Wheezes_," George added, winking, and several of the boys gathered around them grinned.

"Coincidentally, we've got a few owl-order forms you can take home," Fred grinned, and pulled out several of them from his pocket, along with a set of eye-wateringly bright sticky-notes in the shape of arrows. "And just in case he's a bit busy and can't find his Nice List to check what you're down for, you can mark off all the things you want with these nice subtle _pointers_. Have fun."

"That should keep a few of them entertained for a while," George muttered, and Maia smirked, rolling her eyes, until someone tugged on the hem of her dress and she glanced down; several of Chummy's young nieces wanted _her_ owl-order form so they could ask Father Christmas for things.

"Can we ask Father Christmas for a submission to _The Talon_, too?" one of them asked.

"I think you mean _subscription_," Maia smiled. "But we'll continue to send it to you, don't worry."

"Daddy says you should charge money for the magazine," one of the older nieces smiled, and Poppy, with whom she had been playing with most of the afternoon, asked what magazine they were talking about. The eldest of Chummy's nieces, fourteen-year-old Antonia, produced from her overnight-bag the last copy of _The Talon_ Maia had sent her and her siblings, and soon _The Talon _was being passed around and read out by older ones so the younger ones could read it.

Several of the nieces wanted diaries with some of the princesses on from her fairytales, and _very_ sweet Daisy, who had latched on to Opal instantly like an adoring limpid, had shyly, and around her thumb, asked for a dolly in likeness of Maia's rendition of Cinderella, Chummy having read her Maia's version of the fairytale. The idea of making dolls with clothes replicated from her illustrations was so tantalising she had found herself grinning and giggling with the younger girls; she asked the teenaged girls what they'd want out of their cosmetics shop, writing down detailed notes. The hair-dye sticks had been a big hit; at every table there was at least one person who had decided to try and test them out, so streaks of sparkling diamond, shining metallic bronze, vivid turquoise, glow-in-the-dark, scented lilac and shimmering rose-gold glowed in the light of the marquee.

While Maia chatted with Susan Bones, Katie Bell and several of Chummy's relatives, Poppy and May, Chumley's nieces Daisy, Astrid, Flossie and Maisie and nephews Drogo, Ephraim, Jethro and Dorium came over, and asked whether they could go to _school_.

Both the twins and Maia had had a lot of exposure for their inventions during the party: Maia demonstrated her nail-wraps, hair-dye sticks and designs for her cosmetics kits to the older set of teenagers and some fashion-minded kids who came for the party, as well as the homework-diaries, while the little ones loved the fairytales, the flavoured lip-glosses, the stationery and colouring-books. She had packed hers and the twins' order-catalogues, and gave out quite a lot that afternoon, and was surprised by how many of the older witches seemed highly interested in her cosmetics; the pocket-wirelesses were a _huge_ success, with Dean promising to send an order for one as soon as he got home.

The cakes for Neville and Harry consisted of a Snitch-shaped concoction for Harry, and a _crocquembouche_ tower for Neville, with several rings of different flavour crème-patissiere fillings creating a tier, dipped in melted sugar and stuck with Fizzing Whizbees and _sparklers_.

Opal was delighted that a huge vat of rich custard stood with bowls of 'fish fingers' to have with them, which were actually shortbread biscuits covered in a thin layer of orangey-gold pumpkin Sparking Sugar (which went off like popping-candy in your mouth).

After the dessert buffet was almost completely wiped out of every sweet thing Maia, Tink and Mrs Weasley could put together (including Maia's contribution of foreign desserts like the Moroccan 'Snake', her wide assortment of French _patisserie_, the inimitable four-layer Black Forest Gateau sprinkled with homemade_ kirsch_; and Mrs Weasley's traditional English sweets, like summer pudding, trifle, jelly, apple pie, poached rhubarb-and-strawberries with either ice-cream or custard, strawberry-tart, steamed syrup-sponge pudding, custard-tart, bread-and-butter pudding, with small crates filled with fresh peaches, plums, dark and white-cherries, strawberries, apples), there were a few more games for the kids, including several Snitch-shaped piñatas that exploded sweets everywhere (Sirius and a few of the other adults pondered whether it mightn't be worth their while to invent piñatas that gave forth miniature bottles of alcohol for grown-ups) and when the babies were put to bed in their tents (after a few tantrums, of course), the pathway to the stage was lit, and Jack and the boys got up onstage. With the wide amphitheatre of grassy terraces for people to picnic on, there was a flat, semicircular space in front of the stage that Lance had wanted to keep for standing observers, but over the course of the evening it had been decided that a polished floor should be added, so people could dance to the numerous acts that _weren't_ rock-bands, and where kiddies could be set up with little deck-chairs and blankets and watch the earlier acts.

So when the boys started playing, featuring their own material and a lot of Muggle and classic Wizard songs, the older children who were allowed to stay up started dancing; they were joined by the adults, and, gradually, a lot of the teenagers in attendance edged toward the dance-floor. The twins were, of course, in the very heart of the dancing, taking out unwary dancers, but they were _surrounded_ by kids, who were all giggling delightedly at the goofiest of teenagers in the place, who were getting them to do all kinds of ridiculous dance-moves that had Maia doubled up as she tried to take photographs. She wasn't allowed to take photographs of the dancers all the time; her camera slung across her front, it was in danger of decapitating unwary kids as she danced energetically with George.

At midnight, the boys stopped playing; Jack called Harry and Neville onstage, and led everyone in singing "_Happy Birthday_". The evening ended with the twins letting off a firework display of some of the most exquisite fireworks Maia had ever seen; dragons wheeling around in the air, great shimmering golden explosions that fell, twinkling, into sparkling stars and fluttering butterflies the children loved to chase, explosions of sound accompanying fireworks of such diamond-bright colours and effects that everyone had paused to gaze up at the sky.

The _Frabjous Chizpurfles'_ private gig at Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom's birthday party had been broadcast as the evening slot so neither Jack nor Vittorio nor even Sirius had to sit and chat into the microphone, though Lee Jordan had done a good job of filling an hour while Sirius had a drink and a chat earlier in the afternoon, and the wireless equipment was turned off for the night, the debris cleared from the dance-floor and the dining-marquee as people made their way along the illuminated pathway toward the camping-area.

The party didn't exactly stop after the gig ended, or because music no longer played on _Radio_ _Rock_; campfires appeared here and there among the tents in the non-family-only camping-areas, normal ones and glittering purple ones, ones the colour of bluebells and one that wafted sparkling pink smoke into the air, with people drawing out secret caches of alcohol from their bed-rolls and picnic-baskets, sharing around the bottles and laughing, chatting, warmed by the fire and the warm night air, roasting things over the fire and just talking.

For a little while, Maia sat, cuddled up with George, laughing and chatting with the new people she had met, Hogwarts students she would be having lessons with in September, but with a yawn, and realising the time she had awoken, she retreated to the tent she and the twins had created for themselves, little more than a strip of embroidered cotton draped over a conjured frame. She crawled into her sleeping-bag, leaning on her pillow with her journal out in front of her, lying on her stomach so she could set a little bottle of ink on the grass, and illuminated their tent with a few golden bubbles that floated at the apex of the tent. The twins, lying either side of her already in their pyjamas inside their sleeping-bags, brought out their own notes, and while they listened, smiling, to the children giggling in their tents (having begged their parents to share with their _new friends_!) and the other teenagers chatting sleepily in their own tents, Maia wrote down a few more notes, then drifted off, the twins still murmuring quietly to each other.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Pretty cool birthday-party, don't you think? Especially for a kid who hasn't had one his entire life, and I doubt Neville had much fun with all his elderly relatives invited over for tea and cake!


	35. Chapter 35

**A.N.**: Sorry I haven't updated in a while; I've been under the severe mental trauma that _dissertation_-year brings! But I thought I'd treat you all! Please review.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_35_

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><p>Tuesday began early for Maia, almost with the dawn, especially with the children who had risen early, excited and ready to have some more fun; so, while Kreacher helped Mrs Weasley get things prepared for a buffet breakfast for everyone, Maia and George kept the kids entertained at the playground, teaching them how to play hopscotch, and use the little wooden yo-yos Maia had commissioned her carpenter-friend to make, which she had painted with bright, pretty designs; they also played Kneazle-Kneazle-Nogtail again, and in the 'quiet' tent, when they had yawned, tired, but energised and wanting food, George set a few of the littler kids in front of <em>Tangled<em>, and Maia taught a few of the older girls how to use the prettily-carved crochet needles she had also commissioned, which had been paired, in the party-crackers, with enough yarn and the pattern to create a flat crocheted owl or tiny heart. There was, of course, more colouring, and Maia sat writing in her journal while she kept an eye on everyone, and George played Exploding Snap, _Jenga_ and his board-game with the boys.

The morning was a lazy one, again drenched in sunshine and laughter; the buffet-style breakfast consisted of the traditional full-English items, as well as French-toast, leftover puddings from the evening before, _crêpes_ which thoroughly impressed a lot of the kids, especially since they could put anything they wanted on them.

The jar of _Nutella_ Maia had bought, intending to use it to spread inside some of the crêpes, went missing.

They soon found it again, along with Opal, Daisy, little were-girl Beroe and Thomas each bearing a teaspoon, helping themselves to the hazelnut spread!

People started to trickle away after lunchtime, thanking everyone involved in organising it for the party; _everyone_, even Neville's most cantankerous relatives, had enjoyed themselves immensely, and it was with a few screaming tantrums and a lot of tears that the children who had bonded with each other over the course of the previous day were torn from each other's company by their _parents_.

"Parents," Maia sighed, shaking her head, hands in her pockets, as a red-faced, tearful Gloria was prised off of Memory, and her brothers, sisters and cousins were rounded up—George had to climb an old cherry-tree to retrieve Absalom, Christian and pretty Embeth, while Oscar was scooped up on broomstick, legging it toward the Big House to evade having to go home, and Hattie, Quentin and Mavis were retrieved from the hencoop.

"Always take the fun out life," George agreed, cradling a crying Sibylla against his hip, clutching his t-shirt.

"D-don't know why we h-have t-to have them," Sibylla sniffed tearfully.

"Me neither. Glad I never had any!" Maia said. "Here you go, take one of these goodie-bags. I _thought_ that'd cheer you up!" Sibylla took the goodie-bag George had lured her out of a linen-cupboard in the Hobbit-hole with, a tremulous smile on her lips.

"—_I DON'T WANT TO GO!_—"

"Daddy, can't I stay—"

"—never _see_ them again—"

"—_they_ get to go to school, they don't have to take lessons with _you_, _Mother_!—"

"Get _up_, Peregrine."

"I've been Permanently-Stuck to the grass."

"—_HE'S BEING KIDNAPPED_!—"

"—someone got me with a Jelly-Legs Jinx, I can't walk…"

"—we'll just have to stay here—"

"_Stranger! Stranger! Stranger_!"

"—I'm not going with you; I don't know who you are!—"

"—you _say_ you're our dad!—"

As the Knight Bus was flagged down outside the gate for the teenagers who were expected home; the goodie-bags were used to lure the kids toward the Hobbit-hole for Floo access; and Noah tried to take Opal home with him; the tantrums were abated only with promises that the children could see each other very soon for play-dates and invitations to birthday-parties; Remus received commitments from the seven parents who had been uncertain about enrolling their children in his were-school, seeing the way their children were treated by everyone at the party, something they hadn't expected; and Maia had to use her little bag to transport all Neville's and Harry's presents back to Grimmauld Place due to the sheer number of them (presents being mandatory); Ron's prefect-badge went missing; and given the adults who had to had already set off for work very early in the morning after a full-English Mrs Weasley had organised especially, those who remained at one o'clock Tuesday afternoon were mostly the Grimmauld Place regulars, and a few of Neville's relatives, whom Maia and the twins coaxed into helping them with a project that had developed over the previous day.

Basil (the Longbottom almost massacred by a half-dozen under-sevens for eating the last of the Sparking Sprinkles) was especially good at Herbology, just like his great-nephew, and though he lamented his brother Algie not being there to help out, he nevertheless got them started with what they needed for the coming festival.

They worked for the afternoon at the Hobbit-hole, immediately trying to put into place the changes they had deemed necessary after observing how things had run the previous day. The additions to the playground; making the uncovered dining-area outside the food-stalls bigger, with the addition of a second section to the dining-marquee; adding tall poles topped with large golden, glowing bubbles on top around the camping-areas, with sign-posts featuring glowing lettering; an area for a little petting-zoo (farm-animals would be conjured on the day, including a baby donkey, rabbits, lambs, little goats and chicks) and a corral for the winged-palomino foal one of Chumley's brothers had volunteered to bring, a very good-natured little foal who was now the size of a horse, strong enough to take small children for a little fly around the corral, for a small price, the full earnings he would contribute to the school; and, "for the ladies", as Fred had smirked, full-sized cardboard photographs of Cedric and Harry in their Champions uniforms, for people to take their photograph with if they so wanted, again for a small price.

Several other things were added to the festival's plans: but that afternoon they refined the organisation of the meadows; the menus for food available from the food-stalls; a craft-station for inside the 'quiet' tent with a call for child-friendly volunteers to work the crèche; while Violet, after Angelina had suggested she could volunteer by moderating impromptu Quidditch-matches, had promised to get in contact with a few professional Quidditch players to see whether they would give flying-lessons to the older kids and sign autographs—all money going to the school; Chummy's eldest niece had said she'd volunteer to do manicures using Maia's nail-products, and Chummy's sister next in age to her had volunteered to come and do makeovers using Maia's products, having a bit of a thing for cosmetics herself; and Ailith sent word that she'd tracked down three more acts, including an Irish group that did jigs and dances, a much-beloved children's entertainer who could get even the surliest child to interact onstage, and two professional Latin-ballroom dancers to do a performance as well as give a lesson with their full band, and an amateur dance-contest was put on the bill; and additions to the playground were mulled over and tweaked.

With the runaway-children, an idea had formed between Maia, Sirius and George to keep track of children who would be coming to the festival, and Sirius was set to work on it over the next two weeks, as well as hyping up the festival on the wireless so people would buy tickets.

"I thought we were supposed to be taking a _break_ now that the party's over," Fred yawned.

"Don't forget, we might have an influx of orders," George said, glancing at him. "Everyone will have received their letters from Hogwarts by now."

"We'll have to provision time to get them all sent off," Maia said, yawning luxuriously; she'd slept well, and had had a _lot_ of fun yesterday. There wasn't the same sense of urgency now that the birthday-party was over, but she knew the festival loomed.

As did her exam results. A knot formed in her stomach every time she thought about them; she had been absolutely fine whilst sitting the exams, had been distracted in the immediate aftermath, and as so often happened, the prospect of receiving her results was the only reason she was getting slightly anxious about them.

As Fred said, "Who cares if you've failed everything? They're _Muggle_ credentials. _You're_ a witch."

"It's a matter of _principal_," Maia said, eyeing him. "Anyway, what if my wand was snapped and I was forbidden to do magic? At least I'll have something to fall back on. I _can_ become a cryptologist or go to university and win a Fields Medal in mathematics."

"A Fields Medal?" Hermione asked curiously.

"They don't have the Nobel for maths," Maia said, shrugging, and Hermione raised her eyebrows that, yes, Maia had once aspired, or people had aspired for her that she could win something at the Nobel level. "That's what my year-two teacher said in my school report—once she'd got done telling Aunt Diane that I'd most likely become leader of a large crime syndicate if I continued to go astray with Rosie—that I could win a Nobel Prize."

"_You_, win a Nobel Prize?" Hermione frowned, eyeing Maia slightly appraisingly.

"—leader of a large _crime syndicate_?" George grinned, as Fred giggled.

"Mm. I think she had visions of me being the next Al Capone. Of course, with my knack for numbers, I could easily have hidden the cash and paid basic taxes, thus avoiding Azkaban—I mean, Alcatraz," Maia said, laughing at herself.

"Who's Rosie?" Fred asked curiously.

"Oh, a girl in my class," Maia smiled sadly. "She was to me what Fred is to you, George."

"_You've_ got a Fred?" George grinned, eyeing his twin-brother.

"I used to," Maia smiled sadly; she hadn't seen Rosie for _years_. "She moved away halfway through year-three… And she had my raspberry-scented gel-pen and my lobster _Teeny Beanie Baby_…"

"Not that you hold a grudge or anything," Fred laughed.

"I was very attached to that gel-pen," Maia said. "And the lobster. His name was Toad."

"Er…"

"Yes, I know, wrong species entirely, but still aquatic! And I'd gone through a _Wind in the Willows_ phase," Maia sighed, dusting her hands off. "Diane even found me, I don't know where, a miniature Romany caravan, like Toad has in the book. The lobster lived in there, until I took him to Rosie's house when I was invited for tea. And then I forgot him there, and they moved."

George rested a hand on Maia's shoulder compassionately. "Mai…this explains so much about you!" She shot him a wry look, and knocked his hand off her shoulder; George grinned, laughing.

"How are things going over here?" Mrs Weasley asked; they were sat in the 'quiet' tent, poring over their journals and workbooks, jotting down ideas for crafts kids could do, that they could reasonably charge a few Sickles for. "Boys, Maia, have you had any ideas?"

"A few, actually," Maia said. "Mostly for girls, though—"

"I don't know, decorating tea-cups and mugs or plates and cakes would appeal to both," George said thoughtfully.

"What other ideas?" Mrs Weasley asked.

"Well, I thought, what with teaching the girls to crochet earlier today, what if we could have kids embroider a handkerchief—not a complex design, perhaps just their initial and a ring of flowers or the outline of a dragon," Maia said, and Mrs Weasley made a thoughtful noise. "And then I can show kids how to make a simplified design of my friendship-bracelets, and the little flower hair-clips the little babies were all wearing last night."

"We'll definitely do a colouring-competition," George said, glancing up. "That really kept a lot of them quiet yesterday."

"What about a story-writing contest?" Mrs Weasley suggested.

"We'd have to read them all," Fred said grumpily.

"Or a poem? Fewer than a hundred words, something about the festival. We could read them overnight and announce the winners next-morning. And, I was thinking about this last night when the kids were exchanging all the sweets they got in their party-crackers… When I was in…what, year one, year two? My teacher had us all write something about, if we appeared on a _Top Trumps_ card, what would it say?" Maia said, smiling reminiscently; she still had her _Top Trump_ card! "All we'd need is a load of coloured card, gold and silver inks and a camera, and we could have kids create their own Chocolate Frog Card. I was going to mention it to Remus as something the kids could do in arts-and-crafts at school, to build up their confidence, maybe make them start thinking what they'd like to do later in life. But for a Sickle or two, kids could make their own Chocolate Frog Card—I read somewhere that Professor Dumbledore considers being on one his greatest achievement."

"_I _always wanted to be on a Chocolate Frog Card," George sighed dreamily.

"I can see it now," Fred grinned. "'_Fred and George Weasley, Inventors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers, whose joke-shop _Weasleys' WizardWheezes_ continues to be the most popular destination for Hogwarts students on Hogsmeade visits. Fred enjoys _TheDoors_, sunset walks on the beach, and frisky women. George married a total goddess, together had ten children; and both enjoy gifting their other brothers' kids with free merchandise_'."

"Fred, do _you_ want to make a Chocolate Frog Card?" Ginny asked gently, gazing innocently at him. He paused thoughtfully, as everyone chuckled.

"_Ten_ children?" Maia said, glancing at Fred, half-laughing. George made a thoughtful face.

"Well, someone would have to wrap the owl-orders," he said, and Maia laughed.

"Maia, draw up the design for a Chocolate Frog Card, that's a good idea," Mrs Weasley said. "You know, we could ask that…that portrait-artist in Diagon Alley to come and donate an hour of their time or so to doing portraits for them."

"Nah, that's alright; I can do an hour," George said, glancing up at his mother.

"What about the shop?"

"We've decided, if the festival's two days, we'll split our inventory half and half, so we'll open the stall from about noon to five, or whenever we sell out for the day," Fred said. "Then we can either help out with other stalls for a little while, carry a donation bucket around the camping-areas, or watch some of the acts."

"Mm," Mrs Weasley nodded. "Yes, that's a good idea. Maia, you'll do the same—and after you close up, you can help out with the arts-and-crafts or the food stalls. We're about to head off in a little while. Kreacher's at home preparing a light dinner—" The twins snorted; there was no such thing as a 'light dinner' when teenaged males needed feeding—"so you should all be home by five, and not a minute later, I want you showered and everything before dinner. We all need an early night."

"Whether we want one or not," George remarked under his breath, as Mrs Weasley bustled away.

"We should get back, you know," Maia said thoughtfully, gazing out over the meadows. "We've done all we can do here today; we just need a little break before the madness begins again, and we might have orders to send off."

"Very true," Fred said, yawning and stretching luxuriously. "And we've all got work to do. Do _you_ need anything in Diagon Alley, Maia?"

"I've already got all the books I need," Maia said. "All of the equipment, too. What colour are the Hogwarts uniforms, anyway? I've got black from school, I hope I don't have to buy a load of new stuff—I suppose I can just Transfigure the colour to match."

"We wear black uniform," George said, glancing at her. "You'll just have to switch your old school emblem for whichever House you end up in. And the robes from Madam Malkin's. And once you're Sorted you can get a few ties from the student shop, too."

Maia had been wondering about it, the Sorting. She knew a hat belonging to Godric Gryffindor had historically Sorted every student since it was created, to take the places of the Founders when they were dead and gone, preserving their wisdom and judgement. It was like the best and worst kind of personality-test one could take; the Hat saw everything.

"I've decided I'll ask to be in Gryffindor," she said thoughtfully, taking a bite out of a peach, eyeing the rippling grasses of the meadow in a warm breeze, the stream sparkling. The twins laughed.

"Yeah? Think you asking will matter?" Fred chuckled.

"What if you go by way of the rest of your family, end up in Hufflepuff?"

"I want to be in Gryffindor," Maia repeated, shrugging. "I would have thought choice has a lot to do with where you end up, as much as perceived ability and personality-traits. Because those can change. Hufflepuff wouldn't be a bad second-choice… I'm not sure Cho's statement that I should be in Ravenclaw should be taken as a compliment or not."

"For a Ravenclaw…well, I didn't think much to her," Fred said, frowning.

"Maybe she's book-smart. Can churn it all out in essays but doesn't have a leg to stand on otherwise," George said thoughtfully.

"Suppose. There's book-smart, like Hermione, and then there's street-smart…guess you could say Harry's like that, listening to his gut and his heart more than his brain," Fred said.

"And then there's Maia-smart," George smirked, glancing at Maia; he caught her eye and winked, as Maia blushed.

"Yep. Genius-smart. _Dumbledore_-smart. Book-smart and creative-smart, _Muggle_-smart and legal-smart, with a great sense of humour, compassionate to minorities…"

"Wonder what _your_ Chocolate Frog Card would say?" George said thoughtfully, eyeing her lazily with a warm, subtle grin.

"Well, that'd be telling," Maia smiled, winking.

"The only drawback would be, of course, that people might ever find out you were a _prefect_," Fred grimaced, and Maia rolled her eyes.

"Yes, but I didn't uphold the responsibilities of the position," she reminded him. "Colour-changing toupees; turquoise hair; octopi; erased test-papers; turning the water in my water-bottle into _gin_…" The twins laughed.

"Are we ready to go?" George asked, glancing around.

"I think so," Maia said. "There's not much more we can do here."

"Yeah, I'm ready to go home," Fred yawned. "S'pose we'll have to set an afternoon aside to get our stuff in Diagon Alley."

"We can do that after the festival," George said, also yawning, and the chain-reaction led to Maia stifling a yawn. "Best get that out of the way first. I think we should get ourselves some _nice_ dressrobes."

"Mm. Or commission Maia to make some for us," Fred grunted, shooting Maia a grin.

"Acid-orange alright with you?" she smiled.

"With the loudest, most offensive print you can find," Fred grinned, and Maia chuckled.

"Maybe a thong and a garter."

"That's not eveningwear, darling."

"Depends where you're going!"

"How about a new bowtie?"

Maia raised her hands to her face, shaking her head, feeling the warm metal of her rings—one on her left middle-finger and thumb, one on her right forefinger, middle-finger and thumb.

"Thank you for that image," she said, stifling a shiver.

"_What_?!"

Maia had collapsed on the grass in a fit of giggles at the image that conjured up. Resurfacing, she wiped her eyes, grinning, still giggling a little, "We're not doing a _Radio Rock_ charity calendar by way of _The Full Monty_, you know!" Sirius had barked a laugh at her reference.

"What's this?" Sirius asked, wandering over.

"We're doing a nude calendar to raise money," George grinned. "I'll be in a bowtie, Fred can carry one of our First Aid envelopes, you seem to have a handle on working the Gryffindor tie," George said, eyes wide and earnest.

"You in?"

"Oh, yeah. My body is a temple; people should worship it," Sirius said, preening. Maia choked on a snort, bursting into giggles. "What is this, Maia?" She knew she shouldn't encourage Sirius, but sometimes he'd just come out with the best liner, she _had_ to laugh.

"Violet said the Harpies' calendar has already collected about twelve-thousand Galleons," Fred remarked.

"Yes, but the Harpies' calendar featured seven well-oiled, waxed girls riding wood—oh, that did not come out right," Maia said, pulling an absurd face at the unintentional innuendo that had the twins giggling and Sirius smirking. She rolled her eyes, grinning. She chuckled. "What I meant was, why would people pay good money to see you three partially-naked?"

"What are you trying to say?" Maia just grinned, laughing softly as she climbed off the grass, dusting off the seat of her skirt.

"We should get back to the house."

"Maia, what did you mean?" She just laughed, ignoring the boys as they bantered quickly, and, making a last sweep of the meadows, they Apparated away to Grimmauld Place.

* * *

><p>They had a day of idleness on Wednesday, Sirius reinstituting the Day Off he had enforced with Maia at the beginning of the summer. Although, Maia did go out to celebrate in the evening, having received already seventy-six orders for First Aid kits by the time they returned to Grimmauld Place on Tuesday-afternoon, with requests streaming in for owl-order catalogues from both companies, twelve orders for pocket-wirelesses.<p>

Somehow it worked out that Fred remained behind while George Apparated with Maia to Diagon Alley; but Maia didn't mind one bit. In fact, she actually enjoyed it even more, having George all to herself. And George didn't seem to mind either, not in the slightest. Having skipped out on dinner in favour of seeing what they could find in Diagon Alley, they enjoyed _tapas_ at a _tiny_ hole-in-the-wall Spanish tapas-bar, with only old stools and a ledge running around the room, on which little dishes of Spanish sausages with onion; croquetas; some kind of spicy ratatouille with chicken; meatballs; battered shrimp, salted almonds and tuna _empanadias_ were balanced, with a basket of bread and a dish of garlic mayonnaise. They were served with a glass of ice-cold sweet sherry. The _tapas_ was new for George, who didn't get much variation from good old-fashioned _English_ cooking, from his mother and from Hogwarts dinners, but, having many relatives and thus a constant excuse for a party amongst the Weasley clan, George had developed a taste for sherry.

"Lots of _garlic_," Maia grinned, slathering a slice of fresh bread with the garlic-mayonnaise.

"As long as you're both on it, it doesn't matter," George grinned, helping himself to some too.

"I can't believe we've never been in here before," Maia said, looking around the _tiny_ little place. "It's wonderful."

"Fred likes the _Sunflower_," was all George said, shrugging, and that was true. With Fred around, they had a tendency to go where he wanted; it wasn't that Fred didn't ask where they wanted to go, they just had a habit of not bothering to look anywhere else. But George had smelled the _albondigas_ from the cobbled street, and, as Gandalf said, "always follow your nose", he sniffed out the little bar in a side-street—not even a side-street, really, it was a tiny alley between two shops that had a few doorways and one large window-display along it; the bar door was old, very low, half-buried with time, the flagstones worn to a shine, the walls painted a rich terracotta, exposed beams and soft, warm lighting, and one wall devoted entirely to different sherries.

The owner came over when Maia went back to the bar to ask for another half-glass of sherry each for her and George, because she'd told him how wonderful the place was, and the three of them fell into discussion about where he was from, where Maia had been in Wizard Spain, where George wanted to go and where the owner recommended he go, the recipes Maia had included in her book and whether there were any famous joke-shops in Spain.

When they had finished their sherry (the tapas having been demolished almost greedily hours before, just sitting in the warmth and fragrant air, talking to each other, other patrons, the owner) they went up to the bar to pay their bill; the owner waved them away. He gave them two crumbly almond cookies as something sweet after their tapas, but refused to let them pay.

_Spanish hospitality_, Maia smiled, waving back at the owner as she and George left.

"_Definitely_ going back there. That food was amazing! It was really nice of him to write off our bill," George said thoughtfully.

"It was," Maia smiled. "I'd definitely go back—and demand to be allowed to pay this time, it was wonderful. Try the biscuit."

"Yummy," George smiled, licking icing-sugar from his lips. Maia noticed how luscious they were, and then glanced away, blushing slightly… Without intending to, Maia had started feeling like…well, as if this was a _date_ neither of them had realised they were going on until Fred had backed out of their drink. As if his thoughts were in the same vein, George said, frowning slightly, "Never would have found that place if we'd been with Fred…"

"No," Maia agreed. It would have been the _Sunflower_ for a Butterbeer and peanuts. There was nothing wrong with that, of course; she loved sitting outside the _Sunflower_ and people-watching. But the tapas-bar, so authentic, so secret, had felt…well, like something special. Just for the two of them. Even if they had found it, it wouldn't have been the same with Fred there.

Again, mirroring Maia's thoughts, George murmured, "Wouldn't have been the same with him there…" Maia didn't feel like she needed to verbalise her agreement; when George reached for her hand, she let him thread his fingers through hers, and they strolled down Diagon Alley in comfortable silence, sometimes stopping to examine evening stalls, sometimes new window-displays, chatting about everything and nothing, as they tended to, but also about the boys' shop, whether Maia was going to open a shop of her own somewhere down the line, their new ideas for products, their delight over the number of orders they had received, and they paused outside _Madam Malkin's_, at the full Hogwarts uniform modelled in the window.

"I thought I was done with uniforms," she sighed softly.

"It's only during school-hours," George said, shrugging slightly.

"I thought all-hours are school-hours at a boarding-school," Maia smiled.

"Nah. Most of us change out of uniforms after lessons—especially if we've come from Potions or Herbology," George chuckled. "And on weekends especially, we all usually go out of our way to look…well, doable." Maia laughed, grinning.

"Mm, I see. So you pack your leather-trousers, then."

"Well, I know you have a taste for men in leather."

"Me?"

"Cesare Borgia, anyone?"

"Yes, please!" Maia grinned. George winked, leading her away from _Madam Malkin's_, and Maia laughed; given a brief glimpse of his bottom as she caught up to him, she smiled to herself.

"Enjoying the view?"

Maia glanced up and cleared her throat, blushing. "Maybe." Letting go of her hand, George wrapped his arm around her shoulders; she looped her arm around his waist, as natural a thing as anything, and they decided to wander back to Grimmauld Square at their own pace, rather than Apparate.

Fred was in a state when they returned to Number Twelve.

"Where _have_ you _been_?" he demanded, wild-eyed. "I've been waiting for you! You were supposed to be home _hours_ ago!"

"Well, Fred, we—"

"I don't want to hear it! Just _get_ _upstairs_, _now_!" He sounded almost tearful then, and, shooting a curious glance at each other, they followed Fred upstairs.

"Oh."

"Oh, dear."

"Help me! Help me, help me, _help me_!" Fred croaked, gazing wide-eyed around the attic. Not just the workshop, but the parlour, and every other room, was filled with _owls_. Every breed, every size, amber eyes glowing, hooting and jostling each other, bearing post. Feathers and droppings littered the floor.

"Fred!" Maia slapped him lightly across the face, and he blinked, his eyes clearing slightly of the shell-shocked panic that had flooded his features. "Pull yourself together! We're prepared for this—" At the owls that had started rising from their perches, nipping each other, jostling and trying to fly at Fred and George with their post, Maia said sternly—"Enough of that!" The owls settled.

"They started arriving this afternoon," Fred moaned, eyeing the owls with wide eyes. "Only we've been downstairs. I got about twelve orders off before more started arriving. _Look_ at my _hands_!" Fred looked indeed like he had been attacked by more than a few of the owls who wanted to deliver their orders first.

"George—get a bottle of _All Better_. And the brown paper and baker's string," Maia said. "We'll do a handful of orders at a time, go through all these owls systematically. Now…" As George used their _All Better_ healing-paste to heal the deep cuts all over Fred's hands, Maia, ordering the owls to remain put, freed a dozen of their order-forms; she checked them all over to separate requests for other _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes _products, _Pleiades Inc._ products or requests for owl-order catalogues from First Aid kit orders, and started putting going through the order-forms, prioritising the First Aid kits first.

Popping downstairs to the store-room, Fred returned with armfuls of all the different kinds of First Aid kits (which now included the Quidditch League colours as well as Hogwarts', and she had also done a dozen juicy-coloured 'fairytale' dragon-hide ones with special fairytale stationery and stickers inside). Maia wrote out invoices and dealt with the money; Fred used the brown-paper and bakers' twine to wrap each delivery; and George, with the better handwriting of the two, addressed the parcels.

"By the way, have you two had _garlic_?" Fred asked, after an hour had passed, and Maia chuckled as George's lips twitched; he shot her a covert wink, and they continued working.

It was amazing how many Hogwarts students had sent off for the First Aid kits. George reckoned it was because, "They're _new_. At a boarding-school, when you hear of something cool, the first one to get it in the post is automatically the coolest kid in the class. 'Course, these _are_ actually really cool, and useful, so it's no wonder we've got so many orders."

"And they're individual," Fred said, tipping Maia a slight bow of the head. "If two kids get the exact same contents in their envelopes, I'll be much surprised."

"Hey, did we tell you about our ideas for candles?" George asked, smiling, as he finished addressing a parcel with a flourish, the owl that had delivered the order-form fluttering over to take hold of it.

"Candles? Bit romantic for a joke-shop," Maia smiled.

"Well, we thought, you know, it's actually a lot of work to put a meal on the table for your bloke's dinner," Fred said.

"And it's not always appreciated," George added.

"So we thought, why not let the disgruntled housewife have her fun?" Fred grinned.

"The candles are scented like a full roast, or _apple -and-blackberry_ pie," George smirked. "Light one and it'll fill the entire house with the scent of a full roast-dinner."

"Imagine your old-man's face when he gets home and smells that," Fred grinned. "The hope, the delight, the _anticipation_—"

"The empty dinner-table," George added, with a rakish grin and a soft chuckle. "And, we thought, we'll do one that smells like a full-English—"

"Because there's really nothing better than the smell of a full-English breakfast," Fred grinned. "Light the candle in the morning, your old-man will wake up thinking he's got a treat—"

"—before you set a bowl of soggy cereal in front of him," George smiled. Maia smiled, shaking her head; it really was a good idea, though she wondered whether people mightn't just buy the candles for the smell of them.

"Put my name down for an apple-and-blackberry pie candle," she said, going through another set of orders.

They worked until late; several more owls fluttered _in_ the window while they were still trying to clear out the back rooms of the others. They went through all the orders for First Aid kits—the last, for two shaving-bags, a clutch-purse and two envelopes, one a magpie-emblazoned _Montrose Magpies_ one, and one a juicy-red dragon-hide _Snow White_ one, obviously paid for by a parent; then _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ products; then the twins helped Maia put together orders for her products (an order-form for both _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ and _Pleiades Inc._ products included as a tear-out in _Witch Weekly_), and by one a.m. they had the last parcel—two _Poppy-Romp _blushes, 'After Sex' and 'Misbehave' _Pucker Up_ lip-crayons, three nail-lacquers, a red polka-dot bag, a bottle of _Rum Punch_ highlighting liquid and an advance-order for a set of two-way journals—wrapped and sent off with its owl.

Maia stayed up a little later than the twins, doing the books, tallying up the total orders they had received, solely for First Aid kits; three hundred and sixty-two, not including the seventy-six from Tuesday.

Over Thursday and Friday-morning, they received a further two hundred and thirty-six orders. Just in case their stocks ran low at the festival, they made up more. Mrs Weasley was _thrilled _they'd had so much success with the First Aid kits. The twins and Maia went over all of the orders on Friday-afternoon, tallying up how many of each design they had sold, to better judge which designs were more popular, though with only two variations for the boys' shaving-bags, they weren't likely to stop production of one in favour of the other, and each of Maia's clutch-purses were unique, so it hardly mattered; they got the style Maia sent them.

They had also sent off over two _thousand_ owl-order catalogues between their two companies since their appearance in _Witch Weekly_, and also from Hogwarts students who had ticked the little box on the First Aid kit order-forms that asked whether they wished to receive full order-catalogues and further information on new products (for a Knut apiece, to cover the cost of printing).

Maia received more orders for fairytales; more recipe-cards; her knitted animals; _lots_ of wirelesses and cosmetics; she even had a few requests for employment opportunities. She had written back, explaining her circumstances as a current student, but promised to keep their letters for future correspondence for job opportunities.

So, after heartily enjoying their delayed-weekend party for Harry's and Neville's birthdays, their noses were inexplicably and without mercy thrust back to the grindstone.

They didn't have leisure just to sit around and wait for owls to drift in through the window with order-forms, though.

* * *

><p>Though her list of tasks from Mrs Weasley had, because of the advent of the birthday-party, been cut down, one of them still included the designing of a child- and parent-approved uniform for Remus' were-school. And she and the twins had both come up with new ideas for products during the party, and Maia especially was keen to get to working on them.<p>

On Saturday-evening, they paused; they had another reading of _The Talon_, which Maia had again pieced together beautifully. Hermione had thought it a good idea they each keep a copy of every issue, not even to show other people, just to have, for future employment prospects. Maia did agree that taking part in putting together even a nonsense-newspaper was something that employers would look at and think, _That's original. That requires research, good writing, sometimes humour and artistic talent, the ability to meet a deadline_.

Maia had come up with a wealth of ideas for her _Opie_ stories; and there was a review of the _Frabjous Chizpurfles'_ gig; a poll on the best dessert at the party; who had worn the most outrageous party-outfit; at the last minute, the twins put in an announcement that they had reached seven-_hundred_ orders for First Aid kits, and the game of Tiddlywinks was written about by Ted Tonks, who had chuckled over the copy of _The Talon_ that had drifted around the party, and had wanted to contribute his odd little pieces of knowledge about the Muggle world. Maia had suggested putting a 'Factoid' feature in _The Talon_ on a regular basis, not just with Muggle facts but Wizard too.

Dean Thomas had wanted to contribute some artwork and a piece on football, hearing that it was they who had put _The_ _Talon_ together, and in the same letter, Seamus, with whom Dean was now staying for the rest of the summer, had contributed the lyrics to a classic Irish Wizard jig. In fact, more than one of the party-guests had expressed an interest in _The Talon_, and not just the younger ones. Now, when people asked how much a copy was, they were pausing, considering… The only thing that drew them back from committing to selling _The_ _Talon_ as opposed to giving copies away was that…well, Maia didn't know how long they would continue to contribute to the paper, or whether they would at all.

Cedric suggested that they put a note in with each copy, saying that, if they so desired, people could make a financial as well as/or a literary donation to _The_ _Talon_; at the moment, Cedric suggested, they could put any profits, instead of splitting them and getting about a Knut each, into the were-school. So, in their small way, they could contribute.

A small piece had been done by Neville, who had liked the five ring-fireworks in the Opening Ceremony, to go alongside the twins' firework-display at his birthday-party; Cedric had done a review of _Treasure Island_; and, for the young readers, a 'maze' was illustrated by George in the back with the other word- and rune-games, which the kids had to use colouring-pencils to try and get their way to the Triwizard Cup in the centre, past obstacles. Maia put in a tiny square with a poll typed inside it, a choice of eight different flavours, two of which she was going to put into a special Halloween lip-gloss set; she also contributed her illustrated _Opie: Misadventures of a Girl Stowaway_ story; an order-form for several of her photographed products; an excerpt from _The Little Mermaid_; the concept-design for her polished, inlaid Vanishing Boxes; a copy of the poster designed to advertise the festival; and the designs for the were-school uniform, again, with a small square in which a poll was set up, for people to vote, and another small rectangle left empty for people to write their comments. She had learned how such a little square could be connected with her journal, which would record each time a specific box had been struck through, in each copy of _The Talon_, and would record reader's comments in her journal, a _very_ cool spell.

George had put 'Drogo the Extortionist' on his own Chocolate Frog Card; the list of tradable Chocolate Frog Cards was amended to include those other children/teenagers had to trade; the results of the myriad tournaments at the party were recorded—Tiddlywinks Champion; Jenga Master; Chess Whiz; Chopsticks Kaiser; Domino King; Hopscotch Hero; Skipping-Rope Tsar; and the winner of the twins' game. Information regarding the 'League' teams for the tenpin-bowling tournament was added after the names were all drawn out of Maia's hat. Several charms—joke; cleaning; decorative—were illustrated and described; Mal had sent Maia information on when specific bands were releasing new records; Remus had contributed a Defence spell; Sirius added a crossword and an excerpt from his first-year journal, which he was working his memoirs around—it had everyone near wetting themselves with hysterics; and a small elaborate frame at the topmost corner on the front page featured one solitary number.

A countdown to the first of September.

Moving photographs of how to do specific crochet designs; an embroidery pattern for a Snitch; an 'Adopt-a-Bunny' advertisement for Maia's hand-knitted animals; the twins' newest memoir of their misdeeds; three comic-strips (one from George, one from Dean Thomas, one from Chummy's niece Althea); a review from Angelina about her week-long Quidditch training-course in early-July; and Maia had come up with a banner to put at the bottom of every back-page, in homage to the creators of _The Talon_, the 'First Nine'; her, the twins, Neville, Cedric, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, Opal and Harry. She had recreated everyone's Thinking Caps (they always wore the same hats during readings, even if their costumes changed) in watercolour, with their pennames inked in swirling calligraphy beneath on Opal's trailing diaphanous veil, which shimmered subtly in the painting.

The note about donations to _The Talon_, all of which would go to _W.I.N._ to contribute toward the were-school, was added prominently below the banner on the front-page, with a piece on the birthday-party (featuring, thanks to Fred, a reprint of the photograph Sirius had showed everyone) and all its attractions, with a 'reprint' of Harry's piece on conjuring a Patronus (the previous _Talon_ issues having exhausted the topic of Dementors and their removal from Azkaban; Hermione had contributed statistics on how many Dementor-attacks there had been during the War, an agonisingly high number) and a bit by Neville on tending to Fanged Geraniums, Singing Marigolds and Ticklish Tulips—the seeds in the party-crackers all being said flowers; and the beginning of a piece on the history of the Olympics by Maia, with her suggestion that, to make the modern games more interesting for those not sports-inclined, "_athletes should return to the ancient ways, playing their various sports _naked_, and covered in olive-oil. It would cut costs on team uniforms (let's face it, _Team GB_ should be taken out and shot for appearing in front of the _world_ in those god-awful white-and-gold, flashback-to-the-80s tracksuits), and provide a lot of entertainment_".

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review! I put in a Nutella moment, my thoughts on the Opening Ceremony, and Maia and George's first '_date_'.


	36. Chapter 36

**A.N.**: I didn't get the quality of reviews I'd hoped for with my last update, but despite that, here's another chapter.

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_36_

* * *

><p>On Sunday, they kidnapped Opal.<p>

Jules arrived, and had to explain that his parents had returned from South Africa two nights before, and he and Opal were invited to Sunday-lunch.

Sirius' lower-lip trembled, and he flung himself down on the kitchen-table, wailing, having inexplicably "lost the _will to live_!" and Maia, Tonks, Chummy and Ginny chattered so loudly and so quickly, each cutting over each other's voices, shrieking at Jules for thinking of "taking away our _baby_!" accusing him of springing a nasty ultimatum on them without warning—

"Hand over the five-year-old or the apple-and-blackberry pie—?!"

"We're _completely_ torn!"

George grabbed an appalled Opal, who had burst into tears and started screaming at the top of her lungs that she wasn't "_leaving my family_!" and Disapparated, while Fred set his jaw, arms folded over his broad chest, and said defiantly, "You'll _never _find her".

"She's our poppet now!" Sirius sniffed, pouting.

"Suddenly I know how Adam felt when he tried to get his brothers to return the girls home," Jules sighed, shaking his head, referencing, of course, _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers_, a favourite of Opal's. "You can't keep my daughter from me."

"Ha!" Fred snorted gleefully. "Don't underestimate us!"

"—you're not taking her away—"

George reappeared, empty-handed; not even under threat of torture did he reveal Opal's location. Sirius could have found Opal in a heartbeat, of course; he knew all the best hiding-places for ninja hide-and-seek (hide-and-seek played in total darkness, usually after watching the orphanage episode of _Doctor Who_ with the Silence hanging from the ceiling). But he pouted, upset that his new little irrepressibly cheerful friend was being taken away, and didn't help the adults scour the house for signs of blonde-ringleted life.

While the adults continued to search—well, while Mrs Weasley and Remus helped Jules search—everyone else sat miserable in the kitchen. _Maia_ didn't want Opal to go. What would they do without her bouncing on the bed to wake them up; filling the halls with her giggles; getting them to make-believe in the playroom; giving her reading-lessons and letting her 'accidentally' stumble upon _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ products; what about _Spike_; and if Opal left, the were-babies would have no reason to stop by either. She was only allowed to sit in on _Talon_ meetings because Sirius let her stay up on nights when there were readings. How would they continue to educate the Weasleys about _Disney_, Winnie the Pooh, _Pirates of the Caribbean_ and _Doctor Who_? Who would sneak away with some of Maia's petit-fours and hoard her sweeties won during card-games? Who would climb into bed for a cuddle with Maia, a warm, snugly ball of blonde ringlets?

Opal had become such a natural and seemingly-permanent fixture of the house, had turned it into a home with her relentless cheerfulness, her enthusiasm for fun, her affection for everyone inside it, her precociousness, her sense of humour and sweetness. No one wanted to start seeing her _only_ on such-and-such a day, for only an hour or so, and Maia pondered whether she could extend Opal's visit, claiming she needed Opal to use as the model for her were-school uniform designs.

"We came up with a cunning plan in case Jules tried something like this," George said, pouting miserably, his head on Maia's shoulder, curled up to her.

"Oh dear," Maia sighed.

"It's a good one!" Fred said indignantly.

"It's a way to get around this whole Jules-taking-Opal-away thing," George said, grimacing at Jules as he dropped into the kitchen, empty-handed, as Fred gave the father a nasty look. Both twins sat up straight.

"I'm listening," Sirius said, glancing up.

"We're adopting her," Fred declared.

"_What_?"

"Opal will make a _fine_ daughter," George said staunchly, smiling charmingly.

"Of course, first we must be married," Fred said, glancing at his twin.

"Naturally, darling; I'm very old-fashioned," George said, sitting up a little straighter and fluttering his eyelashes coquettishly.

"And then adopting as a gay couple is never easy," Fred said, eyes on George as he shook his head. George glanced at them all, his eyes wide and earnest.

"We just want to give love."

"Oh, George!"

"Oh, _buttercup_!"

Maia burst out laughing; the twins were such a double-act—and, indeed, they were going to get up on the miniature children's stage to do stand-up comedy—and sometimes, they could be extremely sweet and charming.

"Alright, where is she?" Jules asked, frowning at them all; they all stopped laughing at the twins' display.

"She's _ours_ now!"

"Anyway—she knows too much. She can't leave!"

"I've got to use her as the model for my uniform designs. Otherwise I won't get the proportions right."

"Yeah—and, we still haven't caught up with all the _Doctor Who_ episodes. Opal's got to _explain_ things!"

"And I haven't taught Opal how to plait her hair yet."

"Or tie her shoelaces."

"She still hasn't told me where her stash of sweets has disappeared to."

"And we're onto _G_s for her writing lessons. They're _really_ difficult!"

"And a 'First Nine' _has_ to sit in at _Talon_ readings. It's _The Law_," Maia added, with a firm nod, folding her arms over her chest as she stared challengingly at Jules.

Jules sighed heavily. "You do realise I'm bringing her back after Sunday-lunch?"

"_What_."

Everyone gaped at him, appalled.

"You mean you let us believe we'd _never see her again_, and here you were, already planning to bring her back this evening!"

"Talk about _heartless_!"

"Fetch my smelling-salts! I have such tremblings and flutterings all over me!"

"I can't believe anyone would be that cruel."

"Oh this is such _wonderful_ news!"

"I'll go and get the baby, then?"

"Woe betide you if you get her home a _minute_ later than you say you will—"

"—or the next time you take her out, we'll give her _Irascible_ _Dragon_."

"And it'll _serve you right_!"

Opal had got herself worked up into a right state over being taken away from her "_family_", and only with a written contract signed by Jules, attesting to her being returned after Sunday-lunch, clutched in her hand, did she consent to totter, still sniffing and trying to catch her breath, out of Grimmauld Place.

The twins put together a set of rules and regulations that henceforth Julian Ruffio was bound by with regards to his behaviour regarding were-girl Opal Ruffio, henceforth known by the aliases "poppet", "pet", "Opie" and "Ope" by the rest of the residents of Number Twelve. Chief among them was it being now held as highly immoral to take Opal away from Grimmauld Place without a week's notice, and failure to emotionally and physically prepare Opal for such an upheaval as Sunday-lunch with her grandparents would result in Jules being forbidden to take her.

Jules took the list of rules and regulations in good humour and, Maia thought, very watery eyes. He hadn't expected his little girl to become quite so attached to everyone in Number Twelve—or that everyone in Number Twelve would latch on to her so completely.

* * *

><p>"Maia?" Remus knocked gently on Maia's bedroom-door, stepping tentatively over the threshold.<p>

"Remus? Come in," Maia said, her voice muffled because she had her stylus clamped between her teeth, alternating between it and her paintbrush as she worked in her journal. She clambered off her front, on which she'd been sprawled on her bed, and sat cross-legged, patting the mattress. "Have a seat, what's up?"

"Have you had _Irascible Dragon_?" Remus frowned disapprovingly, eyeing her features closely.

"No. Just twelve cups of tea," Maia said, blinking, before yawning. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, actually…" Remus sighed heavily, and Maia opened her jaw, dropping her stylus into her hand, and set it out of the way carefully.

"What's up?" she asked.

"You know you mentioned earlier in the summer that you might like to sponsor a werewolf student?" he said, glancing at her rather shyly; Maia nodded. "New legislation has been passed, and…well, the long and short of it is that Professor Dumbledore can no longer give out financial aid to…well, to werewolves. The Ministry has made it clear they do not want werewolves at Hogwarts—"

"There wasn't anything in the paper," Maia frowned.

"Ailith doesn't know about it yet," Remus sighed; suddenly he looked _very_ tired, and he ran a hand over his face. "I only just heard of it myself, Dumbledore stopped by last night. I suspect Ailith will have it in the _Prophet_ by tomorrow-morning, though. Young witches and wizards refused their right to a magical education simply because they were bitten by F—" He broke off, his cheeks flushing with anger, and he let out a heavy, miserable sigh.

"So the Ministry's actually trying to interfere at Hogwarts," she said coldly, wondering how many young werewolves had excitedly torn open their Hogwarts letters…only to now hear they might not be able to afford to even go.

"Yes. The first Cabinet ever to do so," Remus said, frowning. "I was the first werewolf ever to go to Hogwarts, you see… I was very lucky that Professor Dumbledore became Headmaster when he did… And the children we've managed to track down, who should be at or are about to start Hogwarts…they're lucky Professor Dumbledore is _still_ Headmaster."

"There are children already Hogwarts-aged who didn't go?" Maia asked curiously.

"Precaution," Remus sighed heavily. "Parents not wanting their child victimised any more than they already suffer… The panic of what might accidentally go wrong."

"Who's putting through all this nonsense in the Ministry?" Maia asked, already guessing. "Umbridge?" Remus shot her a dark look.

"She's building on all the anti-werewolf legislation she's already forced through the Wizengamot, no werewolves employed where non-werewolves work, etcetera… She's trying to make it so no werewolves are educated where non-werewolves attend school. Only, she's going about it the sneaky way, trying to stop it getting to the papers; they're trying to audit all the funds Dumbledore has to give out to deserving children who need the financial support, but do it through the Examining Board, which _does_ have a say in the school, at least its curriculum. The Ministry finds out he's paying for a werewolf's schoolbooks…"

"And Wolfsbane," Maia said sadly, glancing at Remus, who nodded. She sighed, then glanced shrewdly at Remus, before smiling.

"You'd like for me to set up that grant, wouldn't you?" she smiled. "For werewolf children? To pay for their wands and robes and things."

"I know it's a lot to ask," Remus said, but Maia was already smiling proudly; he had remembered her wanting to help. Yes, she was very involved with helping organise the primary were-school, providing premises for the fundraising festival, putting some of the profits from her business toward the W.I.N. fund, and even just befriending the young werewolves at the birthday-party. That had gone a _long_ way with the children _and_ with their parents; the children had very rarely had friends before, or even contact outside their families, and the parents had been anxious that their children would be victimised and bullied.

"So Professor Dumbledore's not allowed to fund werewolves at Hogwarts _at all_?" Maia said, dragging her journal toward, her turning the page after drying the first with her wand, illustrations of different embellished hairstyles and mural ideas for a playroom drying; "Where's my pen?"

Remus reached over and picked up her discarded stylus; Maia smiled, dating the top of the fresh page in her journal. "Not at all," Remus said.

"But how would the Ministry know?" Maia asked.

"They'll know," Remus said darkly, and she glanced at him; from whisperings over the twins' 'bug' in the dining-room, they had all discovered that there had been a few rumblings inside the Ministry about Hogwarts—about Professor Dumbledore, about his staff, their _loyalty_ to Dumbledore, the progress of the students, recent examination results and the _nature_ of the last few Defence teachers, and just what was being taught in the classrooms. Remembering what Sirius had said about the Order needing the kids _on the inside_ made Maia especially very suspicious that something was going to happen at Hogwarts.

"So what do I need to do?" she asked. "What about the Wolfsbane Potion, is that being provided?"

"Professor Snape will brew the potion," Remus nodded, "from his own personal store of ingredients. So we needn't worry about that, any further than not making a show of the children receiving it."

"Okay… How many were-students are enrolling at Hogwarts this year?"

"Four," Remus said. "One going into seventh-year; one into sixth; one into fifth with you and the others, and one starting at the very beginning in first-year."

"And do they all need financial aid?"

"Not all," Remus said, picking up the little _very_ pretty pentagonal, rose-inlaid box Maia had picked up in Diagon Alley (one of a pair; George had the other in the twins' room). "The older students' parents have saved enough money by _not_ sending their children to Hogwarts in the past to fund the last few years of their education at school, and since they will no longer have to provide Wolfsbane, that will be a considerable financial burden lifted."

"Yeah," Maia said darkly, frowning; she knew that it wasn't the _ingredients_ as much as the time and effort it took to brew the Wolfsbane Potion, and prejudice against werewolves itself, that had many mixers putting their prices up astronomically—even though no werewolf could ever _afford_ to buy it in the first place because of Ministry legislation making it illegal for werewolves to actually find paid work.

"The first-year's parents, well…they have lost much since their daughter was bitten," Remus sighed sadly. "Like my own excellent parents, hers have tried everything to find a cure…" He sighed. "I really wish she could have come to the party, but I didn't know about her until last night; Professor Dumbledore asked me to go along to talk to her parents when he explained that she _could_ still come to Hogwarts."

"Don't they want her to go?"

"They worry she'll be victimised," Remus said sadly. "Professor Dumbledore assured them, as long as the necessary precautions are made, nobody need ever know Aliona is a werewolf—I myself am evidence that it _can _be done." Remus smiled finally, with a small wink.

"Aliona," Maia said thoughtfully. "Wonderful name."

Remus smiled. "I think you'll like her. And I'd definitely suggest letting the twins loose on her as soon as you get to Hogwarts. I think George could bring out the best in anyone if they let him." Maia beamed warmly. "She's had a…well, as sheltered a childhood as a werewolf can have. She hasn't had much contact with other children."

"So… You'd like for me to fund her education?" Maia smiled.

"Well, as soon as I heard about the legislation Umbridge is trying to keep hush-hush, I told Sirius; he's written to the three older students, offering to pay them a monthly 'wage' for attending Hogwarts," Remus smirked, rolling his eyes, and Maia laughed; that seemed exactly the type of thing Sirius would do, financially rewarding some kid for flouting a ridiculous law. "He's sent a letter to Aliona's parents offering the same, a monthly pocket-allowance. But it was always me who had to remind Sirius that he actually had to buy _books_ before going back for every new school-year at Hogwarts, so the practical side to their education is still left up to parents. And Aliona's are very hard done by."

"Am I writing out a money-order or sending cash…?"

"Actually…with both Aliona's parents working incredibly long hours, they would have let Aliona go to Diagon Alley by herself to pick up her things," Remus said, rather sadly, and Maia smiled. "I had suggested either myself or…well, _you_, could meet her in Diagon Alley to take her to buy her new things."

"It would be much nicer that way," Maia nodded. She had a sudden thought. "Um…"

"What?"

"Might it be worth our while to invite Violet's Iris?" she asked. "She's starting Hogwarts this year, too. They'd both then know someone when they get on the Hogwarts Express."

"That's an idea," Remus smiled warmly. "I'll write a letter to Violet."

"Shall I write to Aliona?"

"If you would, that would be very kind," Remus smiled. "I think she'd like to hear from you… I told her about you."

"You did?" Remus nodded.

"Her parents are very keen to get involved with W.I.N.," he said softly, and he gave her a very warm smile, "and they are very glad to hear there's someone so virulently opposed to werewolf-prejudice who'll be attending Hogwarts with their daughter."

"I'll look after her," Maia said, smiling softly. Remus winked subtly.

"Of that I have no doubt," he smiled affectionately, leaning in to give her hair a very soft kiss. "I'd better go and write this letter to Violet."

"What's Aliona's surname?" Maia asked.

"Fitzwulf." _Son of Wulf; appropriate_, Maia smiled.

When Remus had left the room, thanking her for her unquestioning decision to help finance a poor girl's education, Maia grabbed a heavy book, a sheet of stationery and started writing.

_Dear Aliona,_

_(You have such a lovely name, by the way, Aliona Fitzwulf, it's wonderful; novelists everywhere would swallow their own ears for a name like that!)_

_I just heard from my friend Remus (perhaps he introduced himself as Professor Lupin, when he came to see you yesterday with Professor Dumbledore?) that you're going to start your first year at Hogwarts this September. Well, firstly, congratulations!_

_And you're probably wondering who I am and why I'm writing to you! My name is Maia, and I'm part of the _W.I.N._ foundation I think Professor Lupin must have mentioned to you and your parents yesterday; I'm starting Hogwarts this year as well, though going into fifth-year, rather than first. And I'd suggested to Remus earlier this summer that I could create a grant for werewolf students who need financial aid buying their spell-books and things, and Remus told me you might need a little help buying some of your things._

_I know another little girl who is starting Hogwarts this year, and I am hoping that the two of you can meet, if only so you both know someone to sit with on the Hogwarts Express. But I thought, perhaps I could come and meet you in Diagon Alley to help you buy your school-things; and if I can get Iris to come too, you can meet._

_I'm quite busy at the moment, helping to organise at music-festival to raise money for a primary-school for werewolf children, but if you let me know what day you're free, I can meet you in Diagon Alley, hopefully with Iris too, and we can buy your new things._

_Congratulations on being accepted to Hogwarts, and I hope it's everything you wish it'll be!_

_Let me know via Borgia (my family's owl; he's not really as scary as he looks. He's rather imperious, but he won't bite) what day you can make it to Diagon Alley._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Maia Black_

_P.S. One last thing; what is your favourite Quidditch team/Muggle fairytale? And would you prefer fairytales over Quidditch or the other way around?_

A reply came to Maia later that afternoon, and she smiled at how quickly she'd received it. _Someone's excited_, she thought, as she broke the seal on the letter.

_Dear Maia,_

_Mummy and Daddy say Thank you very much for offering to pay for my school-things. They didn't know how they would manage it otherwise. They were considering not sending me to Hogwarts. But if you could buy my school-books and uniform, they said they would be forever grateful, and so would I. _

_I really want to go to Hogwarts. _

_I've never been to school before._

_Professor Dumbledore and Remus say there's no reason I shouldn't be able to go to Hogwarts despite being what I am. Remus said he did it, and now he's working to stop people being prejudiced against werewolves. I'd never met another one before. A werewolf, I mean. He was very, very nice. And my daddy liked him a lot._

_Mummy and Daddy are both going to help during your music-festival; they talked with Remus about it for quite a long time, mostly because they wish there had been a school for me to go to like the one you're helping to open._

_I would also really like to meet someone else who will be starting school this year, too, because I don't know __anyone__. Is Iris nice? _

_I've never had any friends before._

_I am free whatever day you would like to meet in Diagon Alley. Do I need to bring anything?_

_Mummy is a Muggle-born, so she always read me fairytales, and I liked The Twelve Dancing Princesses most of all. I don't really pay attention to Quidditch, but Daddy likes it._

_See you soon,_

_Love Aliona_

Sirius' efforts promoting the festival over the wireless, and the posters put up all over Diagon Alley by Maia, the twins, Ginny, Neville and Opal, featuring the revised and finalised list of all acts, features and attractions at the festival, put the Wizarding community in Britain in the mood for a party.

There was still work to be done for the festival; but they received numerous letters from people volunteering to help, especially if it meant they got to hear live music for free, which wasn't really the point; they wanted people to pay, but they also did need volunteers to help with the food-stalls, to act as security, help people navigate the meadows, keep the kids under watch in the playground/stream/'quiet'-tent and crèche and work in the Healers' tents (there were to be four, one in each camping-area and one near the playground). Jack, who had worked several Muggle festivals when he was nineteen and twenty, and Mrs Weasley, who, as Maia said, would have made a fine Army General, were put in charge of designating volunteers to different, specific tasks on the weekend of the festival. And the volunteers came from all over, from all different professions, different ages.

The good thing about the festival, Maia thought, was that it catered to all age-groups; the entertainers were timeless rock-n'-roll acts, famous comedians, children's entertainers (whose material also catered to adult humour without being offensive or obvious), the aero-gymnasts, dancers, and Violet managed to snag several famous Quidditch players to come and give flying-lessons to kids and get them excited about the sport.

Those parents whom Remus had invited to Harry and Neville's party, the ones with the werewolf children, had all volunteered to help out, provided their children were allowed to come, and would be kept out of trouble and, especially, not _targeted_ for any abuse; most of the Order had agreed to volunteer at least a little time that weekend and as soon as Maia received a note from the printer that their order was ready, Sirius announced the six specific time-slots when tickets could be purchased outside _Mal's Record Shack_.

_Dear Aliona,_

_I'll be in Diagon Alley all day Saturday, selling tickets for the music-festival. If you would like to meet in the afternoon at around half-past three, when Iris and her mother are going to get there to buy Iris' things, we can meet outside Flourish & Blotts and buy all of your things._

_I have to sell tickets again at six p.m.; if you'd like to stay with me until your parents finish work, you're more than welcome, or I can drop you at home._

_If you need help getting to Diagon Alley, or Saturday isn't a good day for you, please tell me and we can rearrange another time that's convenient._

_Sincerely,_

_Maia_

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: I know, another new character, but I really don't think JK had the opportunity to delve into the world of wizards from the perspective of Harry's education.


	37. Chapter 37

**A.N.**: The photograph collection of Maia's aunts and uncle is inspired by the enormous collection of photographs taken by and of the Grand Duchesses of Russia, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and the famous Anastasia. Their lives really inspired what happened to Maia's family, and especially the way their family-dynamic was, with a powerful father, the two elder girls paired off, the two younger ones thick as thieves, the brother adored by everyone. Tsarina Alexandra's collection of _Fabergé_ eggs was also a big inspiration, as were the imperial bedrooms in the Alexander Palace (see the _Alexander Palace Time Machine_ website, and especially check out the girls' bedrooms).

* * *

><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_37_

* * *

><p>They had printed three-thousand tickets. By the time they had finished selling them to the general Wizarding public, they had actually had to print more, and sold a total of a little over four and a half thousand tickets. But that's getting ahead; something happened before Maia set up a stall in front of <em>Mal's Record Shack<em> that started cementing an idea she hadn't considered before.

Sirius wanted to photograph the meadow; a map would be handed out with tickets, times for Portkeys, tickets to the Knight Bus sold separately, or staggered Apparition times. The map, featuring all the makeshift streamer-lined pathways, the marquees and tents and stalls, the colourful shepherd's huts serving as different food-stalls, the playground, the family-only area…they would all feature on the map, and the stage would change to update whichever act was performing. And, something Maia had been working on, a very large copy of the map was going to be put up between the dining-area and the playground.

But the photograph needed to be taken from above, from the epicentre of everything, looking down.

"Maia, I wish you'd relax—getting you on a broom is like trying to give Crookshanks a bath," George said, as Maia eyed his broom. That wasn't a euphemism; his old _Comet_ was idling three feet above the ground, like a horse ready to be mounted.

If wizards were anxious about aeroplanes…well, what was to prove Maia wouldn't just slide off the end of the broom and plummet to her death?

"Don't worry!" George smiled warmly; he didn't make fun of her for her aversion to levitating broomsticks. She loved watching him play Quidditch; something about the way his back-muscles worked under his t-shirt when he wielded that Beater's club… "Maia, you're not afraid of falling off. You're afraid of hitting the ground." Maia glared at him, cheeks flushed, her knees feeling a bit wibbly.

"George, I'm a land-mammal. Humans are _land_ mammals," she said.

"So are werewolves," George pointed out, as Opal, giggling shrilly, zoomed past on Fred's broom. Fred ran after her, brandishing his wand and shouting creative obscenities that had Opal giggling harder.

"Children are fearless, everybody knows that!" Maia protested, eyeing the broom.

"I tell you what," George sighed, smiling, his eyes twinkling. "I promise on my workbooks that I will not let you fall." She shot him a dubious look, but…_his workbooks…he must really mean it_. "And if you do slip through my fingers, which I would never intentionally let happen…I will Cushion the ground, so you'll just bounce, until I can zip down and grab you out of the air."

"Like _Superman_," Maia murmured, and George smirked.

"I'm sorry, but I stopped wearing my knickers outside my trousers when I was five," he smiled.

"I know. I've seen the photos," Maia sighed, smirking; George grinned.

"Come on," he said. "It's about time you had your first flying-lesson. Your dad was Slytherin Seeker for Merlin's sake!"

"Well, just don't assume I'll be joining you for pickup games," Maia said.

"That you'll show up to matches bedecked in your finest _Pleiades Inc._ transfers and nail-art and dyed hair is more than enough," George winked. "Come on, it's easy, just like a horse."

"Or a bike," Maia mumbled, eyeing the broom as if it was about to buck her off as she swung her leg over. She gripped the handle, frowning. It felt very odd not to have a set of wheels balancing her. "Of course _today_ I'm wearing a dress."

"For which I am very grateful," George remarked, as he climbed on behind her, wrapping his arms either side of her waist to hold the handle. The immediate sense of closeness made her skin prickle, suppressing a shiver, and she licked her lips, hyper-aware of George behind pressed up against her. "Even if it is this one."

Maia frowned. _Even if it is this one…_ "What's wrong with this dress?"

"I hate it."

Maia blinked and her eyes widened; she glanced back at George. "You—you _hate_ this dress?"

"Yes."

Maia stared at him, bewildered, because…why did he hate this dress? Why did she _mind_ that he hated it?

"Don't worry," George said softly, patting her thigh familiarly, and she glanced back at him, her stomach doing something funny because he'd run his hand up and down her bare thigh, and she _felt it_. It did something to her. He kind of nuzzled his nose against her cheek, brushing the tiniest of butterfly-kisses against her skin, and smiled. "It's not a bad thing that I hate it… Distracted you long enough to get us into the air."

"What?"

"You're not afraid of heights, are you?"

"No. Why?"

"Look down." George smiled warmly, and Maia licked her lips, trepidation coming over her; carefully, she glanced down. Her breath escaped her in a rush.

"How_ beautiful_!" she gasped. She raised a hand to her mouth, eyes wide with wonder. She had never seen the meadows like this… The subtle ridges of the grassy terrace overlooking the stage; the pathways; the streamer-strewn sections of camping-areas; the glittering lake and the gurgling, sparkling streams; the large playground glistening in the sun; marquees fluttered subtly in the warm breeze, the three colourful shepherd's huts—selling desserts in one; savoury items in the middle one; and the last, gaily-painted red one was devoted to selling thirty-five different flavours of popcorn, Butterbeer, iced cordial and cups of tea and coffee—in a semicircle with the sweetshop, the pop-up pub and Florean's outdoor-parlour; the corral for the winged-palomino foal; the straw-bale petting-zoo; the large, cloud-blue circular 'quiet' tent with the crèche, the hammocks for naps, the colouring-tables, the bathrooms and the projector for films, surrounded by smaller tents in a rainbow of warm, pretty colours, each of which featured an individual Art & Craft; the miniature stage for the children; the _maze_ that Basil Longbottom was nurturing every day. Intersecting the children's section, the thoroughfare toward the stage, the entrances to the camping-areas, were the twins' acid-forget-me-not half of their shared tent, Maia's shining champagne-gold half, with a small S.P.E.W. stall set up for Hermione to set up at, and _Mal's Record Pavilion_—which was indeed larger than the _Shack_ in Diagon Alley. The orchards, the woods; she could even see the _beehives_, the empty hencoop, the gentle hills swelling and dipping, _nature_ everywhere, the tall grasses speckled with tiny dots of colour, swans drifting past, water glittering in a sinuous cobweb she'd never seen mapped out before.

She had never seen her family's estate like this…the way her mother and her uncle and her aunts must have…on broomstick. Playing Quidditch with each other… They must have zoomed across these meadows and those woods and hills, knowing every single inch of what was theirs… In the distance, far enough to make walking to and fro a chore, she could see…the walled gardens. The beautiful walled gardens she had never peeked into. The Big House she had never seen…not since she was a baby, when her family was butchered. Heat prickled her eyes, and she sniffed subtly, gazing out over the meadows, the hills… She could see the neat groves…the redbrick chimneys.

"Are you going to take the picture?" George asked softly. Maia blinked, swallowing, and licked her lips as she removed the lens-cap from her camera.

"You promise not to let me fall?" she said, aware how throaty her voice sounded.

"Don't worry," George said softly. "I won't ever let you go." Glancing at him for a second, she couldn't help wondering…he'd sounded so solemn…almost _wistful_… He rubbed his thumb against the top of her thigh, and Maia stifled that feeling in her stomach as it rose again; he held on to her waist as she bent double, almost touching the handle, so she could look through the lens of her camera and fit everything into the frame… Over the breeze, she thought she heard a tiny moan. She took the photograph, and then another to be safe, and when she sat up straight, George was looking at her…differently. His cheeks were subtly flushed, his eyes bright…when she glanced into his eyes, he didn't look away.

"_OI_!" came a shout from below. George sighed, before bellowing back, "_WHAT_?"

"_Are you staying up_?" As Maia adjusted the lens-cap back on, she thought she heard George sigh subtly, "I'm afraid so…"

"Do you… Do you want to take her out for a bit?" George asked, indicating the broom they were still levitating on. "I'll bet you've never seen your home from this angle…"

"No, I haven't," Maia said softly. That thought about her family flying these skies had got to her… "George…will you take me over there." She gestured shyly toward the Big House.

"Toward the chimneys?" George nodded, and they…they _flew_… It wasn't scary, like she'd thought it would be. It wasn't like a roller-coaster, which she was sure Fred would have made it if she'd come up with him… George was very good at flying…

She had never been to the Big House.

She had been curious about it, yes, had wondered what kind of beautiful lives the people who had lived there had led, until she'd realised _who_ had lived there, and why they lived there no longer. She still didn't know what had happened to Bertie and his three sisters, their parents… Part of her never wanted to find out. But those photograph-albums of Diane's… Her aunts' and uncle's childhood and her mother's childhood preserved forever in smiling photographs of exquisitely pretty girls, a curly-haired, bright-eyed boy, a beautiful mother and handsome, grinning daddy, the best years of their lives preserved forever, in _thousands_ of photographs.

There were few who lived now who remembered the people who had lived in that house…

She had never, not in her entire life, stepped foot inside the Big House, or the walled gardens. Once, she had crept up to the gate into the beautiful open courtyard, with its circular lawn in the centre…she had stood, holding the cool metal of the gates, gazing in. Though roses had bloomed in profusion, scenting the air, she had felt like the soul of the place had been sleeping. She remembered a private chapel, tumbledown and overgrown with ivy, the ruins beautiful, right up against one wing of what had once been house-elves' quarters, certainly no coach-house… There was a stained-glass window, she knew, and beyond the back of the house, the grove of neatly-planted trees leading down a grassy slope, toward the stream that wound its way idly to the Hobbit-hole; in mid-air, she could see beyond the redbrick mansion, to the end of that gentle slope speckled with wildflowers, beautiful, natural; a small marble folly glittered in a copse of trees, near a small carved wooden bridge that rose over the stream, a path overgrown with beautiful flowers of every kind leading toward the labyrinth of walled gardens.

She had never been inside the Big House. Now, she wanted to see it.

George touched down on the meadow right outside the closed black gates, scrolling metal hinged on old semicircular walls, with two old-fashioned lamps at either side; there was no road, not even a footpath that she could discern. Outside the gates, the wall, everything was natural, beautiful; left to time and the seasons. Inside…the roses were exquisite, their scent perfuming the air, baked by the sun; the circular lawn trimmed with pale stone was…perfectly trimmed, a luscious green. A few lilacs, an apple-tree, and lots of beautiful flowers and fragrant herbs, the prettier magical plants and some of her favourite flowering plants decorated the flowerbeds at the sides of the courtyard, and the flowerbeds beneath the white-trimmed enormous windows of the redbrick manor-house.

It was truly a very beautiful house, redbrick, three-storeys including the attic-rooms with their little gable windows, and Elizabethan, with two sets of double-doors one after the other, at least five redbrick chimneys, neat white trim, she counted seventeen enormous windows including the four gable attic-windows. Almost perfectly symmetrical.

"Who lives here?" George asked quietly, as he joined her at the gate; she had a hand curled on the warm metal. And she noticed the metal seemed freshly-painted.

"No one," Maia half-whispered, gazing at those empty windows. "Anymore… This was where my mother grew up."

"This is the de Lusignan house?" George asked quietly, and Maia nodded silently, gazing at the windows, the roses, the circular lawn, the glimpse of the stained-glass window in the tumbledown, forgotten chapel. "I've heard stories about it." Maia blinked, realising what George had just said.

"Stories?"

"Apparently, the rooms are famously beautiful," George said softly. "There are books about it… Your…your grandmother, when she was wife to the Minister, apparently they hosted a lot of dinners and balls here, a lot of important foreign wizards stayed with them, as part of the family. Lots of people…after your grandfather died…they wrote about their experiences here." That upset Maia. For some reason, that set her off. George didn't see her get upset; it was an internal struggle. Strangers from distant lands had enjoyed her family's hospitality…

"If not for photographs, I wouldn't even know what they _looked _like," she whispered hoarsely, her eyes burning as she gazed at the house. "If Diane hadn't told me…I wouldn't even know their _names_."

Godfrey, Livia. Caro, Lucrezia. Albert "Bertie". Balian, Margalit.

Her family. Reduced to names in unknown handwriting on the aged pages of photograph-albums. Snapshots of lives lived long ago, long ago ended… She saw her aunts more as bright-eyed girls in pretty dresses, curly-haired impish five-year-old boys, more than adults being slaughtered…because the thousands of photographs of their childhood had fascinated her. So _pretty_ in childhood, such bright smiles, so much _affection_, all dressed the same, with lockets and a pearl necklace apiece, hair worn down at all times, until they reached seventeen. The hems of their exquisite dresses lowered, their hair went up, ears were pierced; they became _stunning_. Absolute beauties.

Maia's mother had been the only one to have a family before her death.

The others' deaths were more tragic for the fact they had been so young. They had left nobody behind. Nobody to miss them, or treasure their memory, to tell stories… Diane had rarely spoken of them to Maia; what she knew, she knew from anecdotes written in illustrated photograph-albums put together by her aunts themselves.

"What's it like inside?" George asked quietly, gazing through the gates. "Is it…is it as they left it?"

"I don't know," Maia said hoarsely, wiping her eyes. "I've…never been inside."

"Never?"

"It always seemed…haunted." She sighed heavily. She knew it wasn't haunted; if there _were_ ghosts in that house, she knew she would have seen them; she had met the Hogwarts ghosts.

"Maia, can I ask you a question?" George asked quietly. Maia nodded. "Do you…do you know what happened to them?"

She shook her head. "I don't…I don't know that I want to." George nodded subtly. "But I… I want to go inside." George offered her his hand, and when she took it, he threaded his fingers through hers.

"I wonder if it's…locked…" George trailed off, because as Maia had reached for the handle on the gate…something clicked. As if unlocking. Maia glanced uncertainly at George. "It is yours now… Follow your nose?"

Follow her nose. Follow her instincts. Diane had never forbidden her to come here… She just never had, so Maia hadn't either. She'd known something bad must have happened here, if Diane didn't ever talk about it, and having seen those memories during her first brush with a Boggart…this was the place.

But her mother had grown up here.

The gate squeaked slightly as she pushed one side open. George followed her, long legs easily keeping pace. She noticed things. The freshly-painted trim on the windows; the neatly trimmed lawn; the beautifully-tended roses.

"Does it seem a bit…?"

"Well-kept?" Maia murmured, nodding. "It's always been this way…" The glass front-doors opened quietly, into a little porch; a greater set of carved wooden doors greeted them, and Maia paused, gazing at the etchings.

"Badgers," George murmured.

"That's Hufflepuff's symbol, isn't it?" George nodded.

"Nocturnal, hard-working…vicious when provoked," George said. "I did like Badger in _The Wind in the Willows_."

"I'm just glad you liked the book," Maia smiled sadly, as she opened the doors. They weren't locked.

The hall was stunning, panelled beautifully, with a shining parquet floor and a rich rug, little sconces on the walls bearing little golden glass baubles to illuminate the polished wood; to their right, doorways and a passage led off; to the left, more rooms, another passage, and a staircase with a beautifully carved banister rose up, around along the wall, to a gallery overlooking the hall, paintings hanging on the walls, shadowy passageways leading to the different wings. Closed-up for the last fourteen years…it didn't feel _old_. It didn't feel musty, close, with the faint scent of rotting wood. It didn't feel dusty or disused, the way Grimmauld Place had been. In fact, it was everything Grimmauld Place _should_ have been, had Kreacher kept it up. There was a large fireplace, with a carved mantelpiece, and a painting. A painting of an incredibly beautiful family in their finest dressrobes: the ladies were all wearing their most beautiful jewellery, their hair pinned up and decorated; the men looked incredibly handsome.

When the subjects of the painting—Maia's mother, her grandparents, her aunts and uncle—saw them, pretty laughter rippled through the hall, and the elegant figures became far more animated, hopping up from their elegant perches to beam and wave.

It wasn't the only painting of them in the house; as Maia and George made their way around the house, investigating each of the rooms—the _stunning_ drawing-room; a three-storey-high library that had to have magical qualities because it certainly was too high a room to actually fit within the structure of the house; a panelled study; a billiards-room and a room especially for taking tea, filled with pretty furniture, lovely portraits and landscapes, and… In every room they peeked into, it felt as if the occupants had just popped out to Diagon Alley for something.

Embroidery hoops were left on a chaise tucked in a cosy-corner in the exquisite drawing-room; books lay on the desk in the study with paperwork Maia read enough of to know was official Wizengamot legislation, signed by Godfrey de Lusignan. Minister for Magic. Her grandfather; garments of clothing remained on the floor in a shared bedroom upstairs, painted with a frieze of Snitches and Fwoopers amongst Flutterby blossoms, the silky coverlets on the plain little beds embroidered with monograms, a hodgepodge of furniture and two matching dressing-tables under the windows, each covered with silver-framed photographs. One of the beds was rumpled, the other perfectly made; on one of the dressing-tables, a perfume bottle had been left with the stopper out, and a little brush still had the powder of a rosy blush on its bristles; sheet-music was laid out on a little table, with a half-completed crocheted granny-square, a watercolour, a copy of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and a mess of Chocolate Frog Cards, a very old _Witch Weekly_ and a box of kitty-treats.

The next bedroom was alike in the hodgepodge of furniture, though the walls were soft pink rather than warm gold, and the frieze featured winged palominos, sphinxes and golden butterflies; the carpet was the same as the other bedroom, with a long runner from the bathroom at the far end of the hall, through the double-doors to the first bedroom, the second, to the playroom at the end of the hall; another two identical dressing-tables sat beneath the windows, and a beautiful set of dressrobes was laid out on one of the beds, with a string of pearls. Books on alchemy were stacked, tumbling onto the carpet, beside one of the beds; romance novels were neatly arranged on a desk beside the other bed, above which was a collage of beautiful paintings, photographs of four girls, and…Maia. This bed was slightly rumpled, and a little ball of rose-pink angora yarn trailed to the blanket-draped little armchair right beside the bed, where someone's exquisite inlaid rosewood writing-box sat open, stuffed with letters and pretty things, and…and a tiny pair of rose-pink angora _mittens_ still on the little knitting-needles.

They were about the size for a toddler.

The monogram on the little quilted silk blanket on the end of the bed was an _L_. Her aunt Lucrezia's bed. The other bed bore a _C_; Caro, the eldest. They had shared this bedroom; Maia's mother must have shared the other with the youngest sister, Margalit. They had already found the only boys' bedroom, decorated much like Sirius' and the twins' bedrooms in Grimmauld Place, with posters of Quidditch teams, pretty girls, photographs of friends, magazines tossed about, clothes crumpled on armchairs, vinyls stacked by a record-player, the desk messy with papers, books, Chocolate Frog Cards, a letter half-written to someone named_ Serafina_.

Caro had been going out that evening, then; Lucrezia had almost finished her knitting project. She just had to cast off… Margalit, the youngest, was definitely the messiest; Caro had been incredibly intelligent to have been reading books on alchemy. Lucrezia, the beauty, had preferred romance novels, Charms books; there were seed-packets in her writing-box with notes for a planned flowerbed… Balian would no longer have slept in her little bed in the bedroom she had shared since childhood with Margalit; she and Maia had lived in the Hobbit-hole. Maia had never known they had lived there before her mother had died.

The wall of wardrobes in the bathroom, with its silver bath etched with the names of every de Lusignan to use it—Maia's name was there, the very last—still contained all the _exquisite_ dressrobes and clothing her aunts and mother would have worn, down to sweet garters, beautiful shoes, stockings galore, hair-pins of every kind, hair-decorations she could have dreamed up from her illustrations of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, bags and gloves.

Back through the bedrooms, through her mother's childhood bedroom, to the older sisters' room, she paused, perched on the very edge of the bed, and drew the writing-box into her lap. Her aunt would have been the last person to touch this box…the little mittens. She let out a soft, heartbroken gasp; there were photographs, as yet unframed, in the writing-box, with sets of illustrated letters bound in little lengths of colourful ribbon. Photographs of _Maia_ as a toddler, formal pictures with her in the tiniest, most sumptuous little dressrobes, a ribbon around her crown keeping her curls out of her face, a _tiny_ string of pearls around her little neck, her hair curling so beautifully, beaming at her aunt.

There were formal portrait photographs of her with Lucrezia, with Caro, with the two of them together, exquisite complements to each other's beauty—Caro with glowing fair skin, rich auburn hair, intense grey eyes with expressive eyebrows and the most elegant hands ever; Lucrezia, beautifully made up, sugary blonde with eyes the colour of bluebells, lovely hairstyles and stunning delicate jewellery and very beautiful lips.

There were photographs of Maia with young Margalit—though the aunt who would have been a teenager at the time seemed not to care that they were formal portrait photographs, and despite being dressed to the nines, she sat tickling and playing with Maia, whose face had dimpled with delight, flashing pretty pearly teeth. Margalit was the complement of Maia's curly-blonde mother; rich brown hair that had been cut dramatically short, the deepest, darkest chocolate-brown eyes, neatly-groomed but dramatic eyebrows, and a _beautiful_ smile, lips painted an exquisite shade of red.

And there were pictures of Maia…with her mother. Both dressed exquisitely, the young, curly-haired toddler was almost a perfect miniature of the very _young_ mother. Balian looked most like her sister Lucrezia, though her features were all on a more vivid scale, those deep navy eyes the size of saucers, rich golden hair curling beautifully; Balian wore exquisite jewellery, the same as all of her sisters; little toddler-Maia was drawn to the lengths of pearls, and the tiny shimmering gems on the dressrobes. She wore her own little set of dressrobes, matching her mother's and aunts', and one of her favourite photographs was of all of the sisters together, beaming, with Maia standing, her hand held by Lucrezia, Caro smiling with a hand at Maia's waist, on the little chaise Caro and Lucrezia shared, with Margalit on a delicate footstool to their left, Balian standing so elegantly behind Lucrezia, smiling down at Maia, obvious pride and love radiating from her expression.

There were several photographs of Maia with her _grandparents_. Her grandmother, in looks so similar to Caro they could have been sisters, draped in her most exquisite jewellery, wearing her finest dressrobes, held a standing Maia on her lap, beaming with pride. And if Margalit had liked tickling and teasing Maia, her grandfather was worse! It could not have been clearer that this impressive older gentleman _adored_ his little baby granddaughter.

And the photograph of toddler-Maia with her uncle? She sat cuddled up against his chest, sucking her thumb, Bertie smiling down at her warmly, the photograph taken from the side.

"I… I think they're stunning," George whispered softly, gazing at the photographs; he sat beside her on the bed, gazing at the pictures as Maia went through them.

"They were," Maia said sadly. The photographs couldn't have been taken very long before her family had been murdered; she looked only a fraction older than in the photograph Sirius had shown at the boys' birthday-party.

"Are they dated?" George asked, and Maia turned the photograph of her with her aunt Lucrezia over. In loopy, elegant, almost unreadable writing, the date, _Lucrezia with Baby, 19 June, 1998: Formal portrait for Daddy's birthday._

"_Baby_," Maia murmured, eyeing the handwriting. Had they called her 'Baby'?

"Everyone says you're the spitting image of Sirius," George said thoughtfully, observing the group photograph of _everyone_ together—Godfrey, her beautiful grandmother Livia, the four sisters, handsome Bertie, with Maia sat in her grandfather's lap, beaming, playing with a small diamond bracelet that must have come from Livia's wrist. "But you've got a lot of your aunts in you." He pointed out two of the beautiful girls. "What were their names?"

"That…is Caro. She was the eldest, and Margalit was younger than my mother by two years," Maia said softly, feeling incredibly sad; Margalit would have been about the same age as George was now. "Margalit was seventeen…when she died; Lucrezia would have been twenty-one. Caro was two weeks shy of her twenty-fifth birthday. And Bertie…I think he was twenty…three."

"Seventeen," George said softly, gazing at Margalit in the photograph of the four sisters together, sans Maia. "From these pictures…it doesn't seem real that they could have been murdered… Who could bring themselves to murder these beautiful girls?"

"Why go after all of them, instead of just my grandfather?" Maia sighed, feeling an ache in her chest not unlike being vivisected.

"Because he was a progressive," George said sadly, glancing at her. "Godfrey de Lusignan is the most famous and most beloved Minister for Magic in our history. Every single thing the Order is trying to do now, he tried to do, twenty years ago… Werewolf rights; eradicating elf-slavery; level footing with goblins; alliances with the giants; ridding the nation of Dementors; scrapping pro-pureblood laws… Even if he was a pureblood—from one of the oldest families in Britain—he was a…well, a blood-traitor. He tried to get witches and wizards to integrate with Muggles, to learn their culture rather than studying them…"

"So Voldemort sending someone to slaughter them," Maia said tearfully, "it was all just to send a _message_."

"Half the deaths during the War were like that," George said sadly. "No point, no purpose, just a _message_ to others who still had hope. And the murder of your family was… The people who knew Lily and James Potter knew what a tragedy it was that they were killed…but everyone in the Wizarding world at the time, even abroad, knew the de Lusignan family, the radical Minister for Magic who kept his chin up during wartime…he was a beacon of hope for everyone."

"Like Churchill," Maia said sadly, sighing.

"I think so," George said, frowning thoughtfully. "He's that Muggle Prime Minister who got Britain through the Second World War you told me about, isn't he?"

"He is," Maia nodded.

"Then Godfrey de Lusignan was _definitely_ like Winston Churchill," George smiled. "And it was a huge tragedy when he was killed…you've seen the photographs of his family."

"Surprised they didn't just kill his son and daughters," Maia mumbled, sniffing, "leave him to live without them. Live every day wondering what could have been…"

"The Weeping Angels would be feasting," George said solemnly, wrapping an arm around her waist, hugging her closer, and Maia gave him a miserable smile, shivering at the mention of the Weeping Angels. He hugged her close, and sighed. "Guess you're the one left wondering what might have been…" She nodded miserably, gazing down at the photographs in her lap.

"I just wish I knew what they were like," she said throatily, her shoulders slumping. Just _details_; their favourite book, pieces of music they found transcendent; whether they knew anything about or liked Muggle culture, books and films. What were their favourite meals, most precious possessions? Who were their friends, had they had boyfriends/a girlfriend? Pets? What Houses had they been in at Hogwarts? Had they played Quidditch? Had they had jobs, aspirations?

"You'd be surprised how many books there are written about your family," George said, glancing at her. "And a lot of them feature photographs like these. People will _always_ remember them…they were too beautiful, their deaths too tragic to forget."

"Maybe I'll have to read them," she sighed heavily. She gazed at George sadly. "I suppose every Wizarding family now has their own tragedy… Yours, mine, Harry, Neville. Even Sirius now has a tragedy in his family…" George rubbed a hand on her back comfortingly.

"It's not fair that you and Harry don't get to know your families," George said quietly, eyes sweeping over her face. Maia frowned, her eyes burning…

"Why… Why am I always the one who survives?" she whispered, turning to gaze at George with wide, stunned eyes. "_Them_… Daddy. My _mother_… Aunt Diane…?"

George was quiet for a moment, then he sighed. "Because…if you had died, we would never have met. And then half the shelves in _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ would be empty. And we all know what a terrible loss that would be." Maia gave a watery smile. "C'mere, you…" Pouting, Maia allowed George to gather her up in a hug, nestling her head against his chest.

"I'm sorry I'm such a mess," she said throatily, hugging George's waist as she gazed sadly at the dressing-table under the window, the silver picture-frames glinting, a mirror draped in finest embroidered tissue the centre of a collection of perfume bottles and makeup.

George sighed. "I wouldn't like being the only one left behind either."

"It isn't nice," she said, a deep understatement.

"Tell you what, you're putting up a much better front over your aunt than Mum is with Percy," George sighed. "Your aunt died…Percy's just the world's most arrogant douche." He surprised a laugh out of Maia, and she sat up, wiping her eyes. George sighed, gazing at her with a slight smile. "You ready to go?"

"I…I think I just…want to look around a little more," she said softly, eyeing the dressing-tables. George let her take her time, looking through the framed photographs, the titles on books, the contents of little embroidered, upholstered blanket-boxes full of personal trinkets, the contents of the dressing-table drawers.

"Aunt Diane always said a lot can be learned about a woman by the way she keeps her dressing-table," Maia said, smiling, and George chuckled softly.

"The way a man keeps his broomstick," he said, and Maia grinned as he shot her a wink at the double-entendre.

Lucrezia was a fan of perfumes; it followed that she had a love of flowers, too. She seemed to adore lip-colour more than anything, but she also had a few very pretty shades of eyeshadow; her mirror was decorated with sketches of designs for dressrobes, illustrations of hairstyles from Muggle magazines. Caro wasn't as overtly feminine; she seemed to have worn makeup that looked natural and barely-there, but she did like to keep her elegant hands beautifully manicured, as evidenced by the neatly-arranged bottles of polish, the buffer, files, hand-crèmes and cuticle-oils.

Balian's dressing-table was empty, its surface dominated by Margalit's magazines, letters, homework-assignments for Professors Flitwick and McGonagall, photographs that needed framing. But Margalit's dressing-table featured a lot of different lipsticks, hair-potions to manage her very short 'do, things to decorate it—glitter, tiny clips, gems, a headband of elastic thread someone had put a Disillusionment Charm on, making it look like the pearls strung on at strategic points floated in midair when she picked it up; Margalit had apparently designed the headband herself, as a pattern was scribbled on a bit of parchment, with several other designs, featuring the sunburst beads Maia herself loved, and tiny sparkling crystal-centred flowers, the elastic thread Transfigured to look like thin silver twigs with tiny thorns. Margalit had been faithful to one perfume, _Tuberose_, rather than a selection of them as Lucrezia had been. Muggle culture apparently had been known in the de Lusignan house, at least to an extent; Margalit's copy of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ seemed beloved, its pages worn and the cover battered.

Everywhere, Maia saw evidence that her aunts had been raised exactly as she had: with knitting; embroidery; crochet; music-lessons; _language_-lessons; making their own clothes; painting; drawing-lessons. Their projects were everywhere, some half-completed. A photograph in her grandmother's bedroom featured Maia, barely a few months old, in her mother's arms, wearing a tiny pair of crocheted shoes with little satin ties; the same little shoes were mounted in the frame just beneath the photograph.

In the drawing-room, they found a little blanket-box, the lid upholstered and exquisitely embroidered with, among other things, _her_ name. Maia's. Inside it were _baby-clothes_; the exquisite little dressrobes she had worn in those formal portrait photographs. Other little clothes, _tiny_ bodysuits, embroidered sundresses, the tiniest little socks and little hats, blankets and shoes fit for the prettiest of princess dolls. Even a tiny red polka-dot swimsuit with little frills at the hips. Hand-sewn party-hats. These were treasures; her _grandmother's_ treasures… A tiny trinket-box, barely two inches long and an inch and a half wide, of polished rosewood, inlaid with a simple gold _M_, contained the tiny string of no more than six pearls she had worn in the portrait photographs. Another gold necklace, a _tiny_ round locket, the front etched with the Pleiades constellation, and inside…a _teeny _portrait of her mother, and one of her father, both painted on iridescent ivory, was discovered in a velvet-padded leather jewellery-box. There was a doll, and on the armchair, by a very pretty crocheted pincushion, someone was piecing together an outfit for it.

She picked up the doll, gazing at it curiously. It wore an exact likeness of the dressrobes she had worn in the formal portrait photograph with her grandfather… In the study, she sat down at the desk, holding the doll…because she'd seen it before, in a photograph. There she was, sitting on a tiny chair, beaming beautifully, dressed in her prettiest dressrobes, the pearl necklace, the locket shining, her curls glossy, and clutching the doll, dressed in exact likeness to her.

The photograph was in pride of place, with photographs of Godfrey's four daughters and his son; on the other side of the desk was a photograph on his wedding-day, kissing his new bride, who looked so like their eldest daughter Caro in her wedding robes and exquisite veil… It looked like her grandfather's favourite photograph of his daughters and son as children was placed with the favourite of his formal portraits of them, five beaming faces, hands held, running toward the camera in skirts and knitted jumpers, tinsel glittering around their hair, each clutching mistletoe between their fingers, replaced by the supremely elegant adolescent and adult siblings in their finest dressrobes, beautifully made up, their hair done, Bertie so handsome in his cravat and two waistcoats, winking out of the photograph.

She liked the photograph of her with the dolly; because her _grandmother_ had made the doll's dress. She had kept the two necklaces Maia had worn in a box full of her treasures; the photograph was kept in pride of place on her grandfather's desk—her grandfather, the Minister for Magic.

"George…" she said softly, gazing at the paperwork still spread on the desk. "Why… There's no dust. Not even the tiniest bit."

"I'd noticed that," George said softly. He smiled. "It's like your story, Sleeping Beauty. This home is just waiting to come back to life again." He winked at her, strolling around the end of the desk to come up beside her, sitting in her grandfather's comfortable leather chair; he bent to brush a kiss against her cheek. "There you go… Doesn't a kiss break the spell?"

"I think the princess is supposed to be comatose," Maia said, smirking, and she sniffed and picked a thread from her skirt, "and the prince is supposed to be _handsome_."

"Oi!" George laughed, and Maia shrieked a laugh in surprise, almost tumbling out of the chair, when George jabbed his fingers into her waist, tickling her. "Maia…" George's voice turned serious, wondering. Maia glanced up, then followed his gaze, to the leather-topped desk, the paperwork lying there. "Have you read these?"

"No. I don't know what they are."

"They're…they're official documents of legislation," George said quietly. "See the seal? That's the seal of the Minister for Magic—and the other, the one with the purple wax, is the Wizengamot seal. Dad showed me them once. Look at those signatures."

"Godfrey Artorius de Lusignan…and Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Professor Dumbledore?"

"Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot," George said.

"This… Oh my god… You know what this means?"

"Yeah," George grinned.

"Bitch is going down."

George laughed suddenly, grinned. Then he grimaced. "Poor bloke. Shares the same name as Percy."

"…Artorius," Maia murmured, running her fingertip over her grandfather's signature. She smiled. "Like King Arthur."

"If you go buy that violent Muggle film you like… You do have _odd_ taste in men, you know. Tristram, the Doctor, Cesare Borgia, Chris Hemsworth, Mufasa, that scarred guy in 'Tin Doom of Heaven'." Maia laughed, as George smirked; he was referencing, of course, _Kingdom of Heaven_—only, Opal had misheard, and so the bloody film about the Crusades had been renamed 'Tin Doom of Heaven'. Maia quite preferred the edited title.

"I do not have odd taste in men. Just actors. The mature ones get the best roles," Maia said. "Bring this with us, d'you think?"

"Absolutely," George grinned, as Maia started rolling up the legislation.

"You know…I've seen so many photographs of my mother's childhood, growing up here with her sisters, and Uncle Bertie…" Maia said softly, gazing around the corridor as they made their way to the front hall. She had the legislation rolled up and tucked safely in her little beaded bag, George's fingers intertwined with hers as he held her hand. "It always seemed so…_magical_." She gave him a wry sort of smile, but he smiled back understandingly. "I could live here… I can…imagine raising a family here."

"Not in the Hobbit-hole?"

"It has too many ghosts of the things I've lost," she said softly, glancing at George. She sighed, gazing around at the exquisite paintings, some of landscapes, some of ancestors long-gone, some of her family. "This is just an empty house, a place I never went into. Aunt Diane never forbid it; she never said I couldn't explore… I just don't think she could bear to see the rooms emptied of the people she loved, to see their ghosts in the things they left behind."

"And the Hobbit-hole is that for you?" George guessed succinctly. Maia nodded.

"Diane dying…it was the last place I ever saw my father. My mother must have died there, too…" George didn't reply; but his hold on her hand tightened imperceptibly. "It's where our family truly died… Just me, now."

"Maybe it's time to start over," George said, smiling sadly at her. "Rebuild… But could you put away all of their things?"

"I'd…use them," Maia said, glancing at George. She smiled sadly. "Finish their projects, read their books, frame their photographs, alter their dresses…because they no longer can."

"I suppose that's your advantage, over Diane. That detachment," George said thoughtfully.

"That's true. I don't see their ghosts," she said softly. Although that wasn't strictly true; she did _hear_ their ghosts…only when a Dementor approached too near.

"It's a shame Diane didn't write biographies about your family," George said sadly. "She would have known better than anyone what their lives were like, who they were as people…their friends, their interests…"

"I…" Maia glanced at George, biting her lip. "I think she did."

"Really?" George's eyebrows rose. "But…it would have been in the _Prophet_. A biography of Godfrey de Lusignan's family, written by one of the two surviving members _of_ the de Lusignan family?"

"It hasn't been published… I don't think she'd even shown it to her editor friend… I only know, well, I think I know, because I was the one to tidy up her study in the Hobbit-hole. It…it was about ten years ago, I remember the first time I saw their photographs… That's when she told me who they were, their names. Who they were _to_ _me_." George stepped out into the bright sunshine of the courtyard, and she closed the glass doors, locking them with her wand. "She'd just finished a biography of Professor Dumbledore when she…"

"Would you ever read the biography of your family?" George asked curiously, picking up his broom where he'd propped it against the gatepost. The scrolling black gate closed after Maia, and she locked it with her wand.

"I don't know," Maia said softly. "I… I'm afraid of what I might read at the end." George gave her an enigmatic look, and the broomstick hovered three feet above the ground. This time, she didn't hesitate to climb on; George climbed on behind her, tucking her against his front as he leaned to hold the handle, and they rose into the air; this time, she paid attention, seeing the individual blades of grass merge into a sea of flower-speckled green; the sky got smaller, the ground, a larger landscape; George didn't take her directly back to the Hobbit-hole. They took the 'scenic route', over the hills, the meadows; they hovered over the walled gardens, breathless with amazement at their beauty; George plucked a wild white rose for her, and they flew over the woods, the orchard, the scent of ripening fruit pervasive on the air as bees buzzed below.

As they approached the Hobbit-hole from behind, she saw the hencoop, the large, deep-set round windows, the little path to the front-door and the vegetable-patches below, the "party-tree", and, by the bend in the stream, the playground. Opal was giggling somewhere; the sound was so natural, the sight of the playground so…again, so _organic_ in the setting… If she didn't want to live here, if she _couldn't_ live there…why leave it empty as Diane had left the Big House for nearly fourteen years? What purpose had it served to leave the Big House a shrine to her dead relatives? What purpose would it serve to leave the Hobbit-hole empty?

"Where the hell have you been?" Fred called, as they touched down on the slope between vegetable-patch and streamer-strewn pathway toward the marquees and playground.

"You ready to go?" George called back, ignoring Fred's question.

"I'm hungry," Opal said, and that settled that.

* * *

><p>Returning to Number Twelve, Maia found a few of the adults lingering in the kitchen, preparing themselves drinks and grabbing something light to eat before their meeting.<p>

"Um… Sirius?" Maia said quietly, approaching her uncle, trying not to draw attention to herself.

"What's up, poppet?" Sirius smiled.

"Um… George and I…went to the Big House this afternoon," she said softly. Sirius stood up a little straighter, his eyes alert as they swept over her face.

"You did? Are you alright?" he asked gently. Maia nodded.

"I… We found something, in the study," she said quietly, glancing around the room before handing Sirius the rolled up pieces of parchment. "It was just lying on my grandfather's desk."

"What is it?" Sirius asked, setting his Butterbeer down to frown subtly, taking the papers from her. His pale, intense eyes scanned the topmost piece of paper, with its twin seals and official signatures. When he realised what it was, his jaw dropped; then it closed, and his eyes popped. And then he turned to pop a kiss on Maia's forehead, a grin flashing so suddenly across his face that Maia jumped.

"_MOONY_!"

"What?" Remus jumped, upsetting the bottle of wine he'd been refilling Tonks' glass with. "Sorry, Dora." _Dora_? Maia tucked that away for a second, focusing on Sirius handing the legislation to Remus. He took it. And if Sirius' reaction had been comical and stunned… Remus' reaction was something else. He went very pale, his eyes darting from the legislation to Sirius, then back, then his jaw dropped, and his eyes sparkled. His hands shook, and then he started to laugh. He didn't stop for quite a few minutes; by which time, every other adult in the kitchen had taken a look at the paper—Madam Bones had taken it and shot a quantity of plum brandy through her nostrils after snorting a laugh of surprise.

Professor Dumbledore, who arrived in time to accept a glass of elf-made wine, glancing around at Madam Bones' reaction, at Remus still laughing, and the legislation finally reached him.

"_Ahhh_," he said softly, his bright blue eyes sparkling behind their half-moon spectacles. "Oh, Godfrey," he sighed, his smile very sad, "you managed to _sign_ it first."

"You signed it too, Professor?" Ailith said; she was scribbling frantically in a little notebook.

"I did indeed," Professor Dumbledore smiled. "The last time I saw Godfrey was to drop this off for him to sign and authenticate. Oh, Godfrey… You magnificent boy!"

For Professor Dumbledore to call Maia's _grandfather_ a 'boy' was a little odd. But then, she smiled, supposing that to Professor Dumbledore, any one of his students would always seem to be the eleven-year-old boy or girl they had been upon first entering Hogwarts.

"May I inquire…where was this obtained?" Professor Dumbledore asked, indicating the parchment. Maia raised her hand shyly.

"George and I found it in the study in the Big House," she said quietly, a small smile tugging at her lips. She and George _both_ knew what that signed document meant. As did every adult in the room. It explained why Remus was the most jubilant she'd seen him since Tonks had flirted with him in that short little dress at the boys' party, and he'd been coaxed by her into having another few drinks.

"Um…" Fred, who had come downstairs with Maia, George and Opal, raised a hand as if in lessons. "Can someone please explain to me why everyone's getting so goofy about a bit of paper?" Maia smirked at him, _Marauder's Map anyone_?

"This, Fred, is _legislation_," George grinned, "signed by the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and the Minister for Magic, Godfrey de Lusignan, making it _unlawful_ to pass any law restricting the rights of the magical minorities any further than they already were. Minorities including vampires, goblins, house-elves, and _especially_ werewolves."

Fred frowned. "So how come that Umbridge cow—" he sighed, pulling two Knuts from his pocket as Opal turned to him with her palm outstretched—"was allowed to pass all that legislation a few years ago? How come she's allowed to start making a move to stop putting were-kids in Hogwarts?"

"She _isn't_," Remus grinned, eyes sparkling. "_Everything_ she's forced through the Wizengamot has been unlawful."

"Professor Dumbledore, it says the rights of the minorities will be preserved as they stood during Fidela Mayberry's tenure as Minister," Ailith said, glancing at the legislation. "Wasn't Godfrey de Lusignan's aim to restore equal rights to all racial minorities?"

"Indeed it was," Professor Dumbledore smiled wistfully. "Unfortunately, Godfrey and I never got round to pursuing the next step in his plan; that of stripping the legislation Irascibeth Urquhart pushed through the Wizengamot in the years spanning 1849 and 1873, which effectively created Wizarding society as it stands today."

"Oh, Rassy was a nasty piece of work," Sirius grimaced.

"Irascibeth the Irascible," Maia nodded; she remembered the name from the little song she had used to memorise the names and tenures of the Ministers for Magic since the Statute of Secrecy was signed in 1689.

"You know, I think Irascibeth came to Sunday-lunch here a lot," Sirius mused thoughtfully. "Friends with my great-great-grandfather, Phineas Nigellus. Least-popular headmaster in Hogwarts' history. Probably chatted about the purification of the Wizarding world over the apple-pie."

"Speaking of—I'm really hungry," Maia admitted, grimacing guiltily, even as her stomach rumbled. No sooner had she finished saying 'hungry' than Kreacher appeared with a plate laden with sandwiches, sausage-rolls, crisps, a little glass dish of fresh fruit salad—bits of peach, plum, stoned white cherries, strawberries. "Thanks!"

"Let's have a bit," Sirius said, reaching over.

"Bugger off!"

"Maia," Mrs Weasley chided, as Opal smirked and held her palm out to Maia, who sighed and handed over two Knuts from her purse.

"Yes, Mrs Weasley?"

"There's a letter for you, dear, it came with Borgia about an hour ago," Mrs Weasley said, passing Maia a small note rolled up tight. Maia used her wand to unseal it, and recognised the handwriting.

_Dear Maia,_

_Saturday is absolutely fine to meet you in Diagon Alley, Mummy says she can drop me off, but she has to work in the afternoon so she won't be able to stay very long, if that's okay._

_Looking forward to seeing you,_

_Aliona_

"Anything good?" Sirius asked.

"It's from Aliona," Maia said, catching Remus' eye and smiling. "She's coming to Diagon Alley on Saturday-afternoon so we can buy her things before I have to work the ticket-booth."

"That's wonderful," Remus smiled.

"Oh, speaking of tickets for the festival," Sirius said. "The photographs? Did you take some?"

"Yes, and I will process the film before dinner," Maia nodded. "We can finish that tonight."

"Excellent," Sirius smiled. "They'll be ready for Friday."

"I hope you're all prepared to be manning the ticket-booth," Mrs Weasley said, eyeing them almost reprovingly. "It's going to be a busy day."

"We hope," Sirius added.

Maia did develop her film before dinner; all but two of the frames were devoted to photographs of glimpses of life in Number Twelve, setting up for the festival, the twins, Opal. But she had work to do with Sirius and the twins before she could play with her printing equipment. They had a little over a week until the festival; Maia had little _less_ than a week until her exam-results were available, as Ailith reminded her, unfortunately, in front of everyone.

"I heard from my brother Quentin," she said, as Maia handed her a bowl of Black Forest Gateau; Sirius was drowning his own cake in extra double-cream. "He says he gets his A-Level results this Thursday."

"What's that?" Sirius asked, glancing up; he set the little jug of cream down. "Exams—hang on… Maia, didn't you take exams in June?"

Maia nodded. "A-Levels."

"You didn't say a word about exam results," Mrs Weasley said, gazing at Maia, who shrugged delicately.

"I get them on Thursday… I have to go early to get them," she said quietly. If she had applied to university through UCAS, she would have had to collect her results, and then made the necessary arrangements depending on what she had got. But she hadn't applied. Everyone at school and her sixth-form had been almost _appalled_ that she, the linguist and mathematician who was in the top five in the _country_, wasn't applying to Oxbridge. Aunt Diane's abrupt deterioration of health had set things into perspective, and Maia had put off university with thoughts to take care of her. Now, of course, she wanted to receive magical instruction. If she wanted, if she got the grades, she could apply to university at a later date, perhaps after leaving Hogwarts.

"Quentin's beside himself," Ailith sighed. "He's panicking about all the things he answered wrong… But we know he's going to do absolutely fine."

"What time do you have to get your results?" Sirius asked.

"Nine o'clock," Maia said. "I have to go to college to pick them up… I need to find my student I.D. I hope it's still in my purse…"

After dinner, Maia helped Sirius blow up one of her printed photographs to about twenty feet long, ten feet tall; Sirius showed her and the twins how to charm objects like this to track anyone within the specific scope of the document. They were borrowing the idea of the Marauder's Map, though of course, the Map being a jealously-guarded secret, they had only proposed a way to keep track of the underage festival-goers to Mrs Weasley, who'd thought it a good idea, and let them get on with it. By the time they went to bed—early, for a change; they had everything prepared for the festival, as much as they could be, and were now taking the time to catch up on sleep before the madness began again—they had finished the project.

She and George were set to man the ticket-booth at one o'clock while Fred corralled shoppers, a task he said he would entrust to no one else. So Maia and George were in charge of issuing tickets and everything that that entailed.

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Sorry it's taken me a while to update; it's dissertation (thesis) year for me so things are getting more hectic than I appreciate.


	38. Chapter 38

**A.N.**: Please review.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_38_

* * *

><p>Surprisingly, Sirius was an enormous help when it came to Maia finishing her cosmetics. He hadn't been the coolest and smartest kid in Hogwarts during his time for nothing; he could have slept through his N.E.W.T. exams and come out with an Outstanding, he was so talented. While Mrs Weasley pretty much whipped the twins' hides raw to keep them motivated, brewing up more potions and creating more of their products, Sirius helped Maia brew up and bottle, pot and package her products.<p>

It was while Maia worked on her fairytale kits that she and Sirius managed to talk more than they had in quite a while—since she had had her minor breakdown the night before the Dementors' attack.

"So…you and I haven't really had a chance to talk," he said quietly.

Maia nodded, glancing up at her uncle. "That's true."

"I never thought I'd say it, but I'm actually quite beginning to miss when it was just the two of us together, with Remus," Sirius sighed heavily, flicking his wand so a clear glass cauldron of_ Shimmer—and Snap! He's Yours_ lip-gloss started siphoning itself into tubes.

"I know," Maia said softly. She did actually quite miss the _quiet_, the unhurried gentleness they had lived in, just the two of them, taking care of Remus around his transformation, back when she had had ideas but no possible means of bringing them to life. Before she had turned herself into an entrepreneur. She missed the quiet evenings with Sirius, playing _Scrabble_, sipping cider, watching films, just talking. Now, there were so many people in the house…she felt like she hadn't had a meaningful conversation with Sirius for weeks.

She had been bonding with Sirius…now, too much _stuff_ got in the way. She supposed that was what life was about. People had to make the time to bond with each other, to make things special by putting in the effort.

"You were excited to have Harry coming," Maia said, glancing subtly at Sirius. Having Harry here hadn't been…well, it hadn't been an invitation for anarchy to break out in the house, it wasn't like it was a continuous rave each and every night, chaos reigning every day. The fact of the matter was, Harry wasn't a boy who went out _looking_ for trouble and seeking out adventure; he was…a fifteen-year-old boy. His history, his love of Quidditch, his humour and the obvious affection he had for everyone in Number Twelve prevented him from being, well, _dull_.

He was a fifteen-year-old boy on his summer-holidays. He couldn't legally do magic outside of school; he didn't have three-hundred friends to send letters to and visit around the country. He had Ron, Hermione and the rest of the Weasleys, though George had told Maia that, outside of Quidditch practices, he and Fred hadn't had much to do with Harry. It was always Ron who went on adventures with Harry; and Hermione. Ginny was apparently overcoming a hopeless case of infatuated hero-worship where Harry was concerned, and spent more time with Neville than anyone else.

Spending a little more time with Harry, Maia had learned that he wasn't what Sirius had said James Potter was like; adventurous, carefree, hyper-intelligent and incredibly talented. He was a normal fifteen-year-old kid prone to fits of temper and moods, though thrilled to find himself living with people he actually liked. If Maia had noticed that Harry was _normal_, so had Sirius.

"I was," Sirius agreed. He sighed subtly, screwing the lids on several pots manually, to have something to do with his hands to keep him distracted, or hone his train of thought. "I… I confess, I keep trying to see more of James in him than I know there is… Harry's a completely different boy to his dad."

"I suppose he's got to be," Maia said thoughtfully. She wondered, if things had been different, what type of boy Harry would be; the slightly arrogant, fun-loving adventurer James had been, ultra-talented and beloved? Or would his mother's compassionate nature have still outshone everything else? Maia didn't think Harry could ever be a _bad_ boy; but she could sense and understand Sirius' slight frustration. "He grew up completely differently to James. To Lily too, probably."

"True," Sirius sighed. "Prongs would've had those Dursleys skinned for treating Harry the way they have all these years."

"I suppose that falls to you, now," Maia suggested lightly.

Sirius sighed heavily. "I just wish Harry could take things much more light-heartedly. He shouldn't have to be so…well, sombre all the time."

"Considering what's happened to him, I think he's remarkably well-adjusted," Maia said thoughtfully, and Sirius chuckled. "Anyway… Whatever he talked about with Professor Dumbledore the other day must have been important enough…Harry hasn't said much since. To me, at least, and I don't really expect him to, if it's about those Horcruxes."

"Why do you assume it was about them?" Sirius asked casually.

Maia shrugged. "I don't know, something kept niggling about me. Something Regulus… Something my dad…said…in the Pensieve."

"What did he say?" Sirius frowned thoughtfully.

"Things about the Horcruxes, them getting more powerful, able to leave their bindings," Maia said, shrugging. "Something's been annoying me about Harry's scar."

"Oh, I think Harry's scar bugs us all…"

"Things you've told me, things I've heard… I know I'm new to this, but have _you_ ever heard of curse-scars that can warn about nearness of a foe _and_ give impressions of that same foe's emotions?" Maia asked. "Harry's ability to speak Parseltongue… Something about the way he survived the Killing Curse meant for Cedric…" Sirius' expression didn't give much away, but the way he schooled his features not to reveal anything told her a lot.

"Tell me," Sirius said, smiling subtly as he boxed the complexion-perfecting kits she had named _The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships_.

Each large book-shaped cardboard box featured a sample pot of _Hello, Beautiful_ foundation; a removable, malleable-glass snap-closure flat box featuring a sample of _Sit There and Look Gorgeous_ primer-fixer and a sample of mousse-to-powder _Poppy-Romp_ blush; a 2.5 ml bottle of _Tease_ tint; a 2.5 ml bottle of _Shimmer—and Snap! He's Yours_ whitening lip-gloss; and a sample-stick of _Hi-Brows!_ eyebrow-pencil.

As she fit the last of the samples—the _Hi-Brow!_ pencil—into twenty-five of the last 'Hera' _Face That Launched a Thousand Ships_ reusable boxes, shaped to look like books, she sighed, biting her lip, gathering her thoughts.

Glancing up, she sighed softly. "Was Harry a Horcrux?"

Sirius tweaked an eyebrow. "Very succinct. Are you sure you're not the Doctor?"

"I'm sure, I only have one heart," Maia said, boxing the last of the 'Hera' _Face That Launched a Thousand Ships _kits in their packaging.

"But it's an extraordinarily large one," Sirius said, giving her a very warm smile, and Maia couldn't help smiling back. "As for Harry… It'd be best you didn't test your hypothesis on too many people." Maia nodded, understanding Professor Dumbledore probably didn't want everybody knowing Lord Voldemort's—and Harry's—secrets. "But…let Harry know what you think."

"Was I right?" she asked heavily. Sirius sighed, making a thoughtful expression.

"You…you were right, yes," he nodded. "Harry… Professor Dumbledore says by the time Voldemort…killed Lily and James, his soul was so damaged from all the other Horcruxes he'd made, when his curse rebounded from Harry, a piece of his own soul was severed, without his knowledge, and affixed itself to the only…the only living being in the room."

"Harry," Maia nodded. "That's the reason for the scar."

"Professor Dumbledore says so," Sirius sighed.

"And…in the Third Task… Harry was hit by the Killing Curse. It was the part of his own soul that Voldemort actually killed," Maia said quietly, glancing at Sirius.

"Not something he intended to do, destroy his own Horcrux," Sirius said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "Professor Dumbledore believes Voldemort had no knowledge of creating the accidental Horcrux in Harry, let alone that he himself destroyed it when he struck Harry with a second Killing Curse. Cedric grabbed Harry as soon as he was struck by the curse, so until he woke at the edge of the Maze, Voldemort could have believed Harry dead."

"But Wormtail will have heard Harry survived," Maia said. "He's been in the newspapers ever since the Third Task."

"Yes," Sirius sighed. "Both a blessing and a curse for us. Harry survived; and Lord Voldemort was thwarted in his latest, most daring attempt at regaining power. So we now must wait for the next time Voldemort attempts to return. And train Harry up, with the knowledge he won't survive another Killing Curse."

"Why did Harry survive in the first place?" Maia mused, mostly to herself. "How did the Killing Curse rebound onto Voldemort when he tried to kill Harry?"

"As to that, you'd have to ask Professor Dumbledore," Sirius smiled, though Maia thought he was hiding something. He probably knew how Harry had survived; Professor Dumbledore had probably told Harry's godfather all he knew about how Harry had survived, and how to protect him, when he asked Sirius to recall the Order. They were all protecting Harry, as well as staging a quiet, slow-burning revolution within the Ministry. There was only so much that could be done on faith alone when people were risking their careers, even their freedom; so some of them at least, perhaps Mrs Weasley as well as Sirius, after their argument the other night over whether Harry was 'old enough to know', had to know how Harry had survived, and why Voldemort had gone after him as a baby at all.

"Maybe I won't," Maia sighed. "It'd take all the mystery out of the whole thing. And don't underestimate darkness and intrigue when it comes to boys."

"Oh, don't worry; why do you think I got myself a motorcycle?" Sirius winked.

"That, plus your ambiguous reputation as a mass-murderer who escaped an inescapable prison…well, I'm surprised you haven't been upgraded to demigod status," Maia smirked, and Sirius let out his bark-like laugh. "If people were to find out _you_ are The Fugitive on top of that…? You'd be turning women away."

"I've got all I can keep up with at the moment," Sirius smiled warmly to himself. Maia quirked an eyebrow, hiding a smirk. "Anyway," Sirius sighed, glancing up at Maia after he had refilled their teacups. "I didn't really want to talk about Harry… We haven't had a chance to talk since…well, since the Pensieve."

"Oh. That," Maia sighed softly, glancing up at Sirius. She scratched her temple slightly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "I… No, we haven't talked about it."

"But you talked to George about it," Sirius said softly, glancing at her, and Maia looked up from the display she had been working on for the twelve shades of her _Dancing Princesses_ nail-lacquer collection, and the five special ones. On a tiered glass display rippling like water, each polish colour was arranged in a shining, miniature golden boat, a tiny streamer dangling between diamond trees, bearing little silver flags on which the shade names were penned.

"I… You talked to George?" she said softly, her stomach doing something funny. "About…about me?"

Sirius nodded, shooting her a small smile. "You talk to him more now than you ever did with me."

"That's not true," Maia said softly, but Sirius gave her a warm smile.

"Maia, I didn't mean to sound accusatory. I think it's wonderful you and George are becoming so close," Sirius smiled. "Just…let me know, so I can give you some appropriately fatherly, and _wise_, advice."

Maia blushed, but managed to laugh. The idea of Sirius giving her advice on boys and her love-life was almost comical; but the fact that he was offering, that he was thinking about it perhaps being necessary, having observed her with George, was incredibly endearing.

"You have more to tell me about Ailith than I do you about George," she said softly, glancing at Sirius, who had the grace to blush a tiny bit. Or maybe he'd been sampling her _Tease_ tint.

"Oh, well… By the looks of you two, the way you are around each other, the way he _watches_ you, that won't last long," Sirius said warmly, his expression incredibly warm and vibrant. He gave her a thoughtful look. "Unless you don't _want_ there to be anything to say about George." Maia blushed.

She hadn't had anyone come outright and say they'd spotted anything between her and George, or ask her point-blank whether…well, whether she liked George or suspected he liked her…

"I can't talk about this with you," she said, blushing, glancing at Sirius.

"About what?"

"Boys!" Maia blushed. "George!"

"Why not?"

"It's…it's weird."

Sirius frowned thoughtfully, asking softly, "Did you talk about boys with Diane?"

Throatily, Maia whispered, "No."

"So you wouldn't have told her about William?" Sirius asked gently. Maia's eyes burned, and she bit her lip.

"I would've had to," she said hoarsely. "I turned him into an octopus. She'd have…she'd have taken me 'on sabbatical again. But she'd have been more worried about me using magic than why I'd used it."

Perhaps Diane hadn't thought Maia old enough to be looking about boys or thinking about them…but Maia had, and she never had talked about anything like _that_ with Diane. What she knew, she knew from school, from her friends, from messing around a little bit with boys—not William. Earlier boys, who'd been just as excited and terrified as her as they'd fumbled around. She'd never talked with Diane about…boys, that fluttery feeling in her stomach, when her brain felt like it was filled with fireworks and she couldn't think what to say, when he smelled really _good_ and gazing at his lips, wondering what it would feel like to have his large, clever hands on her… Gazing into the distance, thinking about all the things she'd never talked about with Diane, things about boys, having boyfriends…

She had had to play the adult for so long, and far too soon; she _wasn't_ an adult, though she could dress up to look like one, and even if she read erotic novels and appreciated how handsome Bill was, daydreamed about the Doctor and sometimes had to take the edge off after half-waking in the middle of a dream about _George_… She was still as yet a fifteen-year-old girl whose relationships had been confined to the school grounds, kissing against brick walls.

Because she was alone. She had always been alone. And the only person she felt any connection to…was George.

"Hey," Sirius said gently, eyes widening subtly as he walked around the coffee-table to sit beside her on the sofa, wrapping an arm around her and tucking her close. "I didn't mean to make you sad."

Maia curled in to her uncle, who froze for a second, surprised, before melting around her, hugging her close. He stroked her hair gently, not speaking, just…_there_. Her uncle…the only father-figure she had ever known. He had loved her as a baby, even not knowing who she was to him.

"He was right, you know," she sniffed miserably, closing her eyes as she rested her head on Sirius' chest.

"Who was?"

"My dad…" Maia said softly. She gazed up at Sirius. "I'm really glad you're my uncle, Sirius." Sirius let out a soft, throaty sigh.

"I didn't even know you were my niece," he said softly. "She never even _told_ me. All this time… That night we found you in the blanket-box…it was one of the _worst_ nights of my life, but we found you, you were alive…" Sirius fell silent, his eyes bright. "You were always so alive, like a younger version of Opal. So much _vitality_…you kept a lot of us alive in that…that horrible time." He smiled tremulously, his eyes on visions of his past. His pale eyes turned to her face, glittering, his smile incredibly sad and sweet. "Maia…the bright star in all that darkness. That's what we used to call you. That's what _Godfrey_ used to call you. God, he loved you! And look at you now…" Sirius squeezed her, smiling sadly, his eyes bright, and he looked around the _Talon_ Office. "He would be so _proud_ of you, Maia… They all would."

"I wish I knew what they were like," Maia whispered hoarsely, wiping her eyes.

"Your grandfather?"

"All of them. We went into the _house_, and…and it was like they'd just…just gone to a friend's for a cup of tea. Photographs everywhere…projects half-finished…there was still makeup in the dressing-tables, outfits and jewellery laid out for the evening…" she trailed off sadly, eyes faraway, in that abandoned house still full of lives long since over.

"What did the Doctor say?" Sirius said softly. "Nothing can ever be truly lost if it can be remembered… Those things scattered about…they proved that that family did once exist…that they had fun together, that they laughed…that they loved."

"Did you know my mother's family very well?" Maia asked curiously.

"Oh, very well," Sirius grinned, and his grin turned mischievous. "Some of them better than others."

"Which of her sisters did you get off with?" Maia said, rolling her eyes.

"Now why do you assume I'd—yes, alright, I did get off with one of Balian's sisters," Sirius said, not even bothering to try and defend himself.

"I suppose you didn't need the get-naked-to-stay-warm excuse when you're in the middle of a terrifying war," Maia said morosely.

"No," Sirius sighed. "Lucrezia was in the same year as me at Hogwarts."

"Oh, _really_." Aspasia, the most beautiful.

"God she was gorgeous!" Sirius exclaimed, fidgeting, and he laughed.

"Did you two go out?"

"Yep," Sirius smiled. He sighed. "When we were together, it was just the two of us, together…our own world, away from all the things we couldn't bear to think about. When we were apart, it was always too distracting to think about her, so I didn't let myself."

"Did you love her?" Maia asked curiously. Sirius didn't answer for a few minutes.

"A lot of the time, I thought I did. But the War got in the way," Sirius said softly, his expression falling, becoming desolated. "One night, she was just…gone."

"You relived it a lot, didn't you," Maia half-whispered. "In Azkaban. The memory of finding…all of us."

"That," Sirius said, his features without emotion. "James and Lily. Finding Gideon and Fabian… Your _mother_." He let out a tremulous breath, closing his eyes. When he opened them, he was desolated. "A whole generation, my _friends_… Gone forever."

Maia was silent for a little while. Remus and Sirius were two survivors of the War, but they were by no means whole. Neither had survived unscathed. Quietly, she asked, "Does Ailith keep the nightmares away?"

Sirius turned to her, an eyebrow raised. "My niece, is that a subtle question about my night-time escapades?"

"No, I—" Sirius winked, smiling warmly. He sighed.

"She keeps some of the demons at bay…" he said softly. "I have to work on the others. Some days I'm still…still the twenty-two-year-old who loved adventure…couldn't work out what _love_ was, whether it was that feeling churning in his stomach, or if it was something else, and if it was her… Lucrezia." Sirius sighed sadly, seeming to deflate a little, but he continued to stroke Maia's long hair. He glanced at her, his eyes bright. "I'll tell you something? Something I haven't told anyone?" He waited, and Maia nodded, curious. Sirius sighed heavily, then said, with feeling, "I am not going to wait until it's too late this time." He gazed at her with a very serious, intense expression, and it gentled as he read something in her face. He sighed softly. "That book you recommended I read… _Collide_…?"

"_Collision_ _Course_," Maia said sadly; she had recommended the book, because she had believed it above anything would probably have spoken to her bereaved uncle.

"Apart from having me bawling my eyes out at every turn of the page…it taught me quite a few very valuable things," Sirius said sadly.

"It did?"

Sirius sighed. "Harry's not the only boy who lived. We all did. Everyone in this house. We survived. We _lived_."

Maia remembered the book; _Collision Course_ had been such a unique book, it had stuck with her. She doubted she would ever forget it. The imagery, the _emotion_… "That bit made me sob, too."

"It was an excellent book," Sirius said thickly, his expression miserable. "A bloody emotional book, but I felt everything Luc felt…because I've already lived through it. I still feel all of those emotions he went through… I just…didn't have my Sawyer to help me through the tragedy… I had Azkaban to constantly make me relive it."

"That bit's over now," Maia said gently. She hated when Sirius lapsed into thinking about the horrors of Azkaban.

"Yes," Sirius sniffed. "And we have a responsibility to the ones who…to the ones who didn't survive, who can't heal… We have to live for them, never let their sacrifices go in vain… Because we lived." He glanced down at her, his eyes glazed. "To be anything less than our best is an insult to them. We shouldn't ever forget that _we lived_."

Maia nodded, her eyes burning and full of tears. She sniffed softly. "Ailith can help you live."

"Maybe she can," Sirius smiled warmly. "But Harry helped me first. Having Remus again… _You_ have done so much for me, Maia, you don't even know it." He squeezed her tight, kissing her head. He sighed softly. "I'm not so arrested in my development anymore."

"Sirius…" Maia flushed, a little uncomfortable and almost ashamed. She had once suggested that Sirius had a slight case of arrested development from twelve years in Azkaban.

"You were right. About that," Sirius said. "All those years in Azkaban, all that _pain_, that guilt… Nothing but the _worst_ moments in my life… When I left Azkaban…I was still at times very much the twenty-two-year-old I had been upon entering the prison. Everything and everyone I had known had evolved, but I was the same…"

"Not anymore," Maia said gently. "Harry didn't even recognise you. And it's not just the Rejuvenation Drafts… Sirius…?"

"Yes?"

"Will you…tell me about them?" she asked shyly. "About…Lucrezia?"

"Oh, I could tell you such stories!" Sirius said, laughing suddenly. He sighed reminiscently. "Lucrezia _never_ left her dormitory without makeup on, she _loved_ lipsticks and perfume. But you'd never find a more brutal Beater anywhere. She was…complicated, and…enigmatic. She was a champion dueller but she could knit the most _delicate_ little doll's clothes—for you. And _Caro_…talk about intelligent. She would have made Hermione look _dim_! And Margalit… You could not duplicate Margalit's sense of humour if you combined me, James, the twins and Chummy together. She chattered away faster than lightning, and laughed like a Jarvey! She always hated us comparing her to that!" He sighed. "My…best Christmas from my time at Hogwarts…my entire life, really… When Lucrezia and I were going out, I was bouncing between Hogwarts and the Potters'; she invited me to her family's place for the holidays… You've never done Christmas the way the de Lusignan's did it."

Maia smiled without humour. "Diane and I never really…celebrated Christmas."

"Never?" Sirius looked appalled. Maia deflated against the sofa, still cuddled up to him.

"The thought of two solitary presents under the tree, just the two of us for dinner, always seemed so miserable a thought," she said miserably, her features heavy.

After a moment, Sirius said, with conviction, "We'll do it right this year. Me and my _niece_… Balian could always shock you!" he burst out, with a laugh, and he shook his head as he leaned down to kiss her head.

"Will you… Will you write some things down?" Maia asked. "For me? Stories…"

"I will… It will be good for me to remember the _good_ times I enjoyed in my life," Sirius sighed. "I probably have a few anecdotes written down in my journals from sixth-year onwards…"

"Have you been rereading them?" Maia asked curiously, remembering the shelves full of _S_-embossed leather journals.

"Some of the earlier journals, from when I started Hogwarts. I must say I was an incredibly intelligent and articulate humorist for an eleven-year-old," Sirius said thoughtfully. "And, luckily, there's a statute of limitations on how long after the fact we can be punished for juvenile infractions…"

* * *

><p>Friday was nastily exhausting: Maia, George and Fred spent the majority of the day in Diagon Alley, and then in the workshop: boxes of fliers, programmes, maps and lists of entertainments were stored behind a narrow six-foot table George conjured, on which Maia spread a conjured tablecloth, and they sat in deck-chairs, a small crate upturned to serve as a coffee-table for bottles of Butterbeer, one of Maia's pocket-wirelesses and the debris of food people kept bringing them throughout the day. They had put up an enlarged copy of the poster advertising the festival line-up, and draped a banner above it, '<em>TICKETS ON SALE HERE<em>'.

The moment they had set up the till with a float, putting together the first fifty packets of information, the lunch crowd had swamped them. George had to pop back to Number Twelve to recruit Ginny, Neville and Harry and Cedric to help out, putting together the informational packets while Maia and George sold the tickets, and Fred made his way through every shop in Diagon Alley and adjacent streets letting people know that tickets were available.

They closed the stall at three o'clock, so they could go back to Number Twelve for a breather, a short nap, something to eat, using _Redneck-No-More_ to get rid of the burns on their shoulders and noses from sitting so long in the sun; at six o'clock, just as everyone was making their way home from work, they opened up the stall again for another two hours, until dinner-time. They were to repeat it all again on Saturday, and again on Sunday.

To celebrate selling so many tickets on Friday—one thousand and six _hundred_ tickets, including three-hundred family-passes—those who were of-age (or rather, whose reckless and irresponsible uncle/godfather permitted them to go despite being underage) got dressed up ready to go and see the _Perfumed Gobstones_' gig at the _Weeping Sunflower_, for whom Jack and the boys—plus their new drummer—were opening.

The deal was that Sirius would 'allow' Harry and Maia to go, only if chaperoned. So he had decided to come too.

"Sirius—"

"What if you get caught?"

"Nobody guessed who I was at your party!"

"We've already got _Fred_ coming—I'm not carrying _you_ home too," Maia said, and Fred glanced up, looking like he wanted to say something but couldn't because of his cheeks pouched with mustard-chicken.

"Yeah, and I'm not spending the night protecting you from blokes trying to hex you for trying to pull their girlfriends," George said, tweaking an eyebrow.

"Excuse me, but I _promise_ to be on my very best pub-crawling behaviour," Sirius said, holding his hand up like he was making a vow in court.

"Though that's not saying much," Remus said drily. Sirius turned a deadpan expression on him.

"Well, alright, Moony, you can come and chaperone _me_," Sirius smirked, eyeing Tonks, who had glanced up suddenly.

"Remus, you're coming out?"

"I—"

"'Course he is," Sirius smirked challengingly at Remus.

"Can't let a gorgeous piece of arse like yours go into the _Sunflower_ unclaimed," Fred said seriously to Tonks. Maia whacked him.

"You'd better be careful, Fred," she said, frowning at him. "What if the boyfriends of your one-night-stands past come back to hex you?"

"Got it covered," Fred said, waving an idle hand. "I'll tell 'em it was George." George glanced up from his dinner, an eyebrow raised.

"Anyway," Sirius said, turning away from the twins, glancing back at Remus. "You can't spend all your time working, Moony."

Remus gave him a withering look. "I've got a lot of work to do—"

"Remus," Sirius said, gripping his best-friend's shoulders and levelling him with a look. "I will not indulge another workaholic-phase like sixth-year again. It wasn't healthy then, it's not healthy now, and let's face it, you don't wear the hours as well as you used to."

Remus took a deep breath, looking like he was praying for patience. "Thank you, Padfoot."

"You're welcome. Don't worry, you wear the years better than I did," Sirius said, with a smile. He clapped a hand on Remus' shoulder. "Come on. We've _both_ got a lot of _living_ to do."

"You should come out with us," Tonks spoke up brightly, eyeing Remus with a twinkle in her dark eyes. She had come round already dressed up for a night out, her hair today softly wavy, red, with her eye-makeup rather dramatic and beautiful, wearing one of Maia's blushes and lipstick. She'd gone for thigh-high dragon-hide boots, a mini-skirt and the most amazing, dramatic red top.

"Yeah, give Tonks someone to chat with who's not under twenty," Maia said, and Tonks chuckled.

"You don't want a toy-boy, Tonks?" George asked, his crestfallen expression making him look incredibly cute. Maia chuckled, rumpling his hair; he dodged away, holding his hands up. "Whoa! Not the 'do! I'm all sexy, don't ruin it!"

"Oh, sorry," Maia said, rolling her eyes.

"You girls gonna go and get tarted up then?" Sirius asked, refreshing Ailith's glass.

"I'm ready to go," Hermione said; Maia caught Tonks' eye as hers widened.

"You can _not_ go out looking like _that_."

"What's wrong with this outfit?"

"It's _Fair Isle_!" Tonks shuddered. "And you're wearing jeans—Hermione, you'll _bake_ in the _Sunflower_!"

"It's comfy," Hermione protested, looking a little shy in her cardigan, polo-top and jeans.

Tonks sighed, shaking her head, pinching her forehead with freshly-manicured fingers. "Fashion knows not of comfort," she said. "Come along. Maia, we'll need you."

"We don't have time to give Hermione a makeover," Maia called after Tonks, as she frogmarched Hermione up the stairs.

"Come on!" The boys all complained, loudly.

"We are not leaving this house until Hermione is _presentable_!" Tonks called. "How are we going to get people to believe she's not fifteen if she looks like a doe-eyed schoolgirl who's never been cornered in the library?!"

Ron let out a laugh, as Maia's lips twitched. Sirius smacked Ron round the back of the head as Hermione shot him a nasty look, her cheeks flushing.

"I'll bet you've never worn makeup before, either," Tonks tsked, as Maia strode after the pair.

"We'll just _wait for you_, then," someone called. Maia whirled around on the bottommost step, grinning.

"_No_, perhaps George can help get _Remus_ 'all sexy'!" she smirked, and Remus' eyes widened as Ailith chuckled and Sirius turned to his oldest friend with a critical eye.

"Padfoot—remember our accord?" Remus said quickly, taking a hasty step back from Sirius.

"What accord?"

"The agreement we wrote up in fifth-year?"

"Remind me."

"_Thou shalt not clothes-rape Moony_."

"I believe it was _wardrobe-rape_…"

"Can take a lot of different angles on that," Fred said, smirking.

"Yep. Ever played ninja hide-and-seek with Sirius?" George asked drily.

"How's your heart?" Sirius smirked.

"Still thumping, no thanks to you."

"Blame Maia. It was her who instigated the game in this house."

"_It was that_," Maia called back, "_or naked _Nutella_ wrestling_!"

"_WHY COULDN'T WE HAVE PLAYED THAT?!_" George shouted exasperatedly. Maia laughed, striding upstairs to catch up with Tonks, still frogmarching Hermione up to Maia's bedroom.

"Now…got to actually get you _through_ the door into the _Sunflower_," Tonks said, frowning as she sat Hermione down on Maia's bed, curling a finger over her chin. "What do you think, Maia? Straight hair, lipstick?"

"Eyes," Maia corrected. "Hermione has such lovely dark eyes. Bring them out."

"'Course," Tonks nodded. "You getting ready?"

"Yes. Surprised Ginny's not in here whining," Maia said thoughtfully, glancing at the door.

"By the way," Tonks said, grinning as she flashed her manicure—ten different designs of nail-wraps, one on each finger. "_Love_ these." Maia beamed.

"I'm glad you like them," she said honestly. Tonks, so mercurial in physical appearance, also had a rather artistic temperament, contrasting her incredibly serious, demanding profession, and she seemed to love anything vibrant, funky and eclectic. Eccentric was probably a better word, as she was that in spades!

"Mrs Weasley's got Ginny helping her with something at the Burrow," Hermione sighed, eyeing Tonks warily as she approached with a little compact of _Hello, Beautiful_.

"Now this…won't hurt a bit…" Tonks said, tongue between her teeth, as she finished up with the foundation and went at Hermione with a box of _Sweet-Cheeks!_ powder, building up Hermione's eyes with the_ Sit There and Look Gorgeous_ primer Maia had developed, shadow, eyeliner and mascara. Hermione sat through it all, though she looked more and more impatient and uncomfortable by the time Tonks applied 'Skinny Dip' _Pucker Up _lip-crayon.

"I really don't see why all of this is necessary," Hermione sighed, looking a little uncomfortable.

"You want to get through the door and hang out with us, you've got to look the part," Tonks said. "Can't believe you've reached fifteen and not learned how to sneak into a club! I was thirteen the first time I snuck into the _Jobberknoll_ to see the _Patchwork_ _Snidget_ _Complex_."

"Ah, leave her alone; I only started going out about eighteen months ago," Maia said, applying her own makeup.

"Yeah, but _you_ look like _that_," Tonks grinned. "You already look more mature than a lot of my friends."

"You're saying I look _old_?" Tonks shot her a look, and Maia chuckled, turning back to her mirror.

"Y'know, I really should have invested in your company," Tonks said thoughtfully, putting the finishing touches to Hermione's makeup, before turning to her hair with _Lion Tamers Wanted_, which could have tamed even River Song's gorgeous mane of curls.

"You don't have any money," Maia pointed out, putting a pea-sized amount of product on her finger, rubbing it between her fingertips before teasing it through her hair.

"I do! I'm just saving it," Tonks remarked. "Mum and Dad always taught me, a third of each paycheque goes for rent, etc., a third goes straight into savings, and a third is for _me_! Taught me to start a family on a single income…"

Maia sighed heavily, gazing at her reflection sadly, her hands stilling on the lock of hair she was dying a rich sapphire-teal, alongside a pinch of strands of hair treated with the incredibly pretty sparkling gold shimmer dye-stick. As she plaited her long hair over her shoulder, the illusion of a fringe created by the teased, curling locks of hair swept from a dramatic side-parting, the two locks of hair were woven amongst the plait, and looked very pretty, subtly punky.

"What's up?" Tonks asked, glancing over her shoulder as she smoothed the product through Hermione's hair, turning the bushy man incredibly glossy, smooth and darker than usual.

"Opal was chatting about what she'd name her babies today," she said softly, glancing at Tonks, her made-up features feeling very heavy in their miserable expression. Tonks sighed heavily.

"Maybe she'll grow up and decide she doesn't want children," she said doubtfully. "Maybe she'll be a career-woman… All the work Remus has been doing lately, by the time Opal's old enough to go into the workforce…well, she'll be able to."

"Can female werewolves have children?" Hermione asked curiously.

"I've…never asked," Tonks said quietly. "Remus says most of his kind don't have kids—I hate that. _His kind_… He's ours too." Tonks frowned to herself, and Maia glanced at her in the mirror; there was something going on behind those pretty, changeable eyes.

"I wonder if the transformation would stop during pregnancy," Maia said thoughtfully, busy with a malleable glass squeeze-tube filled with _Nectar_ diamond hair-gel.

"I don't know," Tonks sighed, shrugging.

"I suppose the chances of passing along the condition would be heightened if the mother was a werewolf," Maia said thoughtfully. "But the chance of getting it from the father would be halved… I wonder if there are any case-studies on it…"

"You'd have to ask Remus," Tonks said sadly. She sighed heavily.

"What's wrong?" Maia asked gently. Tonks just shrugged.

"Remus is just…well, he's dead convinced if he had a kid…it'd be like him," Tonks said sadly. She looked actually quite upset, brushing Hermione's hair almost unseeingly. "It's just…such a shame he thinks that. I reckon he'd be a great dad."

"He was a wonderful teacher," Hermione spoke up quietly. "He was _wonderful_ with us… He was the best kind of teacher you could ever have… I think he would be an amazing father, too."

"I suppose he wouldn't want to pass on his condition to an innocent child," Maia said succinctly, and Tonks sighed, nodding. "But he can't be certain…"

"I think his belief is enough," Tonks said sadly. Maia nodded, turning back to her hair; she put the finishing touches to her fringe and put on a pair of intricate silver-gold earrings that brushed her shoulders, once beloved by Tonks herself.

"I can't look at Opal and think of what she _can't_ have because of being a werewolf," Maia said sadly. "To think she'll grow up…and have to reconcile with not being able to have children."

"Never know," Tonks said. "She might be the one to find a cure."

"Or she'd whip someone's hide until _they'd_ figured it out," Maia chuckled. "I think Opal could get anybody to do what she wanted if she wielded her force of character. For good, instead of evil."

"Keep her away from the twins," Tonks chuckled, smirking, and Maia grinned.

"Yeah, they're forbidden from ever babysitting her unsupervised," Maia nodded. "They train her up and she'd be…River Song, Mark II!" Tonks laughed.

"She would be a force to be reckoned with," she chuckled.

"At least she'd keep you on your toes in the Auror Office."

"We've got you and Sirius for that," Tonks smirked. Maia shot her a look, and Tonks chuckled. "We're still close to anarchic, the amount of trouble those Dementors caused."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yep. 'Course, I don't mind it, I work best under intense pressure," Tonks said. "I find it rather sharpens my mind."

"Indeed?"

"Yes."

"How is the inquiry going, anyway? Madam Bones still hasn't told me whether I'll be turned over her knee and my wand snapped," Maia said, and Tonks shrugged.

"Well, as Chummy predicted, everything's buried in a load of legal loopholes," Tonks sighed, as she rifled through Maia's dresser-drawers for clothing options for Hermione. "It's gonna take _ages_ to get to the bottom of it. But you know what, I think we've all decided the orders came from _inside_ the Ministry, there's just too much mystery surrounding it. The tracks are covered too well."

"Too well? So they won't be able to find out who's responsible?" Hermione frowned.

"Oh, we'll be able to find out, alright," Tonks said. "But it'll take time, and we just have to hope Fudge isn't fool enough to try and pull the plug on the inquiry."

"Would he?"

"If he thought the order came from inside his office, which many people do, he might want to do damage-control," Tonks said.

"But a cover-up would look even worse," Maia said, smirking. "He's already on incredibly thin ice—_frost_, really—with all the legislation he's allowed Umbridge to pass through the Wizengamot. Using his clout to force Madam Bones to stop her investigation would _scream_ something's up…"

"Fudge is stupid enough to think it would save face," Hermione said coolly.

"How did he ever get into office?" Maia asked derisively. Tonks snorted, and tossed several items of clothing at Hermione.

"What are you wearing tonight?"

"Well… What with our success today selling all those tickets, I've decided to celebrate by going all-out," Maia smiled, tugging a pair of form-fitting leather trousers out of her trunk. "Where did you get your boots, by the way?"

Chatting about clothes, getting Hermione dressed up so she could slip past the bouncer at the _Sunflower_, Maia hopped behind the folding-screen so she could change, and Tonks grinned when she saw Maia's completed outfit.

"Oh, George isn't gonna know what's hit him!" Tonks grinned, and Maia blinked, glancing at her.

"What?"

"Nothing," Tonks grinned. Maia blushed, smoothing the stomach of her top. "The top one of yours?"

"Uh…yes," Maia smiled, glancing down at the top; it was of black lace, with two inbuilt, seemingly floating bra-cups, with little cap-sleeves, and it was almost completely backless; black silk ribbon trimmed the hem at the back, and tied the sleeves together across the top of the shoulders. The original version was actually a mini-dress she had made, with a feathered skirt modelled on the iridescent black feathers of the magpie, but she had loved the top-half of the dress so much, the details of the bra-cups and the ribbon at the back, that she had decided to turn it into a bodysuit so the fabric fell properly against the skin, instead of the hem riding up and ruining the effect of the backless silhouette. "Yes, it is. There's a dress to match."

A knock sounded on the door, and Maia glanced up, smiling; Sirius was peeking through the doorway. "You girls ready to _go_ yet?"

"Almost," Tonks said. "What d'you think, Sirius? Shall Hermione disgrace us?"

"You look very beautiful, Hermione," Sirius smiled kindly. Tonks had done a gorgeous job on Hermione's eye-makeup, and had streaked fuchsia through her straight, shining hair, before curling the ends subtly and using visible black bobby-pins artistically to keep Hermione's dramatic side-parting in place. Hermione still looked uncomfortable, now in a black leather mini-skirt borrowed from Maia, a black translucent-sleeved top with chain-between-stud details across the jacquard bodice.

"Tonks, if you hadn't become an Auror, you might have looked into becoming a beautician," Maia said thoughtfully.

"Merlin, bless my mum for teaching me how to put makeup on properly!" Tonks sighed happily, smiling as she examined her handiwork.

"Dromeda was always mortified if I snuck into her room before she had put her face on," Sirius smiled. "Come on—let's go."

"Hang on—_shoes_," Tonks said. "Maia—"

"I'm looking," Maia said quickly, going to her wardrobe and tugging open the drawers, frowning at her collection of shoes, and found some appropriate for Hermione to wear, not too high or skinny-heeled, dressy or juvenile.

"Put these on," Maia smiled, as she changed into a small pair of black dragon-hide wedges, hand-me-downs from Tonks.

Downstairs, the boys _gaped_ at Hermione.

All except George, whose navy eyes flicked to Maia's leather-trousers, then the plait brushing over her breast; Maia smiled and bounced down into the hall, not even thinking about it as she strode over to George, smiling and leaning against the wall, ankles crossed, as they waited.

"You look nice," she said to George; he wore a plain v-neck black t-shirt and dark jeans. Once they got inside the club, the dim lighting of the _Sunflower_ made his hair look almost _auburn_, rich and dark. Handsome; Maia had never thought a _ginger_ could be handsome, but George definitely was. Perhaps it was his confidence; he _oozed_ charisma in a way that would have made a less self-possessed girl extremely self-conscious. But…in the dimness of the pub, slowly nursing a cider-and-black, listening to the music and laughing as they talked happily with other patrons, Sirius getting more and more animated and enigmatic as the night went on, flirting with Ailith, Maia couldn't stop looking at George. Couldn't stop evening-dreaming about George… She wondered if he'd tested one of the twins' patented daydream-charms on her without her knowledge, because she kept imagining a darkened corridor, _kissing_, body pressed against body… Her stomach went all wibbly, and it wasn't anything to do with the cider she was slowly drinking.

It wasn't the first time she'd had daydreams about George… More lately in the past few days or so than she had at the beginning of their friendship, but her stomach kept going wibbly every time she thought about him, his lovely lips, his large, clever hands, his humour and the sweetness he hid unless he was being emotionally intimate.

"So do you," George smiled, eyeing her outfit. "Interesting top."

"Interesting good or bad?"

George cleared his throat, flushing subtly. "Good. Definitely good." Maia smiled shyly, blushing.

"Where's the rest of it?" Sirius asked, frowning at Maia's torso.

"Sirius," Ailith smiled gently.

"I'm just saying—"

"Save your paternal concern for when Molly's here to witness it," Ailith said gently, and when Sirius straightened up, expression thoughtful, Ailith shot Maia a subtle wink, making her smile.

"Well, alright, but if she has a go at me for letting Maia go out looking like that—" He broke off, pulling a face.

"Come on," Ailith smiled, leading Sirius by the hand. _Better than leading him by any other way…_ Maia thought, stifling a smirk, watching the two together. With the self-altering garments several of them were wearing, they went the direct route to Diagon Alley, using Apparition rather than dawdling through Muggle London—despite the fact that, as Maia pointed out, London night-lifers were hardly dressed any different, probably even _more_ outrageously than they were, in actual fact. Tonks especially would fit right in, and only the way streaks of Maia's fringe and plait glittered like diamonds in intense sunshine despite the darkness would make people take a second glance at her.

"So… In a duel to the death, who do you reckon would win?" George asked; Maia was sat in his lap, his large hand splayed over her leather-clad bottom so she didn't slip off, her knees crossed, an arm around his shoulders, her other hand cradling her cider-and-black; they were both watching Sirius and Fred argue, gesticulating over the noise and excitement of the club, both holding Billywig darts.

"Difficult," Maia said thoughtfully, smiling as she watched the two; she chuckled and rested her forehead against George's, still watching her uncle and George's twin get into a slap-fight, Sirius dragging Fred into a headlock. "I think they'd get bored halfway through and go and have an adventure."

"Like the Doctor," George chuckled.

"Well, Sirius is in a bowtie."

"Where…where did he _get_ that?"

"It's not the bowtie I'm worried about… Where did he get pink disco-swirl _lederhosen_?"

"You'd better get in there and stop the madness," George remarked.

"Me?"

"You're five-times consecutive winner of Billywigs," George grinned, eyeing her mischievously.

"Yes, but that's playing the boys in the band or Chummy, and the boys are surprisingly shy for musicians," Maia pointed out.

"So, challenge yourself," George smirked tauntingly. "Unless you're afraid."

"Oh, George, don't try and goad me into playing 'Chicken' unless you're ready for the consequences," Maia said, raising an eyebrow as she glanced down at George.

"You think I wouldn't be able to handle them?"

"I've yet to see you play Billywigs. For a reckless, dare-devil inventor of joke-products…well, I'm not sure about your moxie."

"Now who's goading?" Maia grinned. She set her cider-and-black down, standing up, and George linked his fingers through hers, as they both giggled and made their way over to the Billywigs dartboard, leaving Harry, Ron and Hermione sitting in a darkened corner, Harry pouting and trying not to be noticed after the first gaggle of young witches had cornered him earlier.

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: A Boxing Day gift for you. Please review!


	39. Chapter 39

**A.N.**: Happy 2013. I figured out whilst reading this chapter again that I am soon to be the same age as Tonks is in _OotP_. Twenty-three…my life has reached its pinnacle…there is now nothing left, but to await the next instalment of _The_ _Hobbit_. Coincidentally, please check out my latest upload, a story for _The Hobbit_ named 'Nobility is Not a Birth-Right' which will expound on my infatuation with Fíli's plaits.

Thank you to everyone who has reviewed or added this story to your favourites/alerts list, I really appreciate it. Have a great rest of the Christmas holiday ('Winter Break').

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_39_

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><p>A full English breakfast and a tiny capful of their hangover cure had them all feeling a lot more vivacious the next morning; there was a <em>lot<em> of teasing over the fact that both Ailith and Tonks had spent the night, so much so that Remus turned the same shade of red as the tomatoes on his plate, and Tonks, who hadn't actually spent the night _with_ Remus as they had all secretly suspected, but who got unusually giggly when hungover, couldn't stop herself laughing, only encouraged by Sirius who kept teasing her about her giggling, which perpetuated it all.

It was the last weekend before the festival; and they all took it easy. Mrs Weasley and Ginny having stayed at The Burrow with Mr Weasley overnight, they were all at liberty to stay in their pyjamas for as long as they wanted, eating a late full-English breakfast, curling up on the sofas together in the den watching films, listening to music, writing articles for _The_ _Talon_ or reading, playing chess and filling owl-orders, working on their projects.

By noon, Maia had put together a huge picnic-basket to keep her and the twins going throughout the afternoon; remembering her promise to meet Aliona to buy her school-things, Maia picked up the matte purple snakeskin First Aid envelope featuring _Twelve Dancing Princesses_ stationery and stickers, embossed on the top flap with Aliona's name in gold, and tucked it into her beaded bag.

Tonks accompanied them into Diagon Alley, with Opal, for an ice-cream at Florean Fortescue's—mostly because Andromeda was going to meet Tonks there so they could go clothes-shopping.

"I've got to get you some _appropriate_ clothes," Andromeda sighed, taking in Tonks' outfit of a micro-mini pleated tartan skirt, the star-beaded fishnets Maia loved, braces and a tight, colourful _Perfumed Gobstones_ vintage concert tee; her wrists were packed with a chunky watch, a colourful dragon-hide cuff, a studded leather strap, and a collection of braided, beaded bracelets Maia had made and given her. Her nails were a combination of colours; the shimmery metallic leopard-print nail-wraps Maia had designed, lilac diamond-effect glitter lacquer and sunflower-yellow. Mismatched bright, patterned socks and ankle-boots completed the look, with a few streaks of colour and special-effects in her hair.

"What do you mean, _appropriate_ clothes?" Tonks asked indignantly.

"Well, darling, you're a professional woman now—"

"Careful, you're close to calling me a lady of the night," Tonks said, tweaking an eyebrow. Andromeda sighed, looking like she was very much trying not to roll her eyes.

"Nymphadora—"

"_Oi_!"

"—you're twenty-three, dear," Andromeda sighed. "You're in the Auror Office. You need to start assimilating your wardrobe accordingly."

"Says who?"

"Suppose your head of department were to see you on your days off," Andromeda said, with another disapproving glance at Tonks' short skirt.

"It's not Scrimgeour's business if I dress like this on my days off," Tonks said, frowning. "Anyway, it's just _you_ who doesn't like me dressing like this."

"I don't—Nymphadora, you could be so _beautiful_ if you just dressed appropriately," Andromeda sighed.

"You mean if I dressed the way _you_ want me to," Tonks pointed out, examining a pair of fingerless gloves made of the finest silvery mesh. "I am not your dainty little pureblood darling, I'm sorry, I can't dress like one either."

"It wouldn't hurt you to try," Andromeda said. "Nymphadora, I understand you've spent the last few years experimenting with your wardrobe after so long in a uniform at school, but it really is getting out of hand now—"

"Mum—nobody else has a problem with the way I dress; in fact, by all accounts, I'm probably the one with any chance of fitting in with Muggles on the street," Tonks said. "Maia calls it 'punk'. And I like it."

"Yes, but darling, it isn't appropriate for the office, and you're getting to the age where it isn't appropriate for you to wear it," Andromeda said impatiently.

"Says who?"

"Nymphadora—"

"_Mum_!" Tonks begged. "We've had this argument _over_ and _over_ again—can't you just give it a rest? Dad doesn't mind the way I dress, nobody else cares, it's only you who's annoyed I didn't turn out the darling little girl you wanted me to be when you named me _Nymphadora_."

"I'm quite resigned you're not the daughter I _thought_ I wanted, Nymphadora," Andromeda said gently, gazing at Tonks with undisguised love brimming in her dark eyes. "I'm just thinking…well, of the type of man you'll attract wearing these kinds of outfits."

"A frisky one, hopefully," Tonks said, investigating the patterned sole of a beautiful pair of ankle-boots.

"Or one who sees past the outfits—"

"To my hot, hot naked bod beneath," Tonks smirked; Maia clapped a hand over her eyes.

"I was going to say to your _personality_," she said, then laughed. "But yes, with your Metamorphmagi, I'm sure you… How did I not think of this before? You can change your body to _any_ specification."

"Yeah, it's great; I never have trouble bra-shopping," Tonks sniffed. "Blokes in the past have tried to take advantage of the fact I can change any part of my appearance at will."

"I suppose you have to have a huge amount of self-confidence not to change your own, real physical appearance," Maia said thoughtfully, and Tonks winked her dark, twinkly eyes as Andromeda made a thoughtful noise. "I mean, beyond hair-colour. Although I would have _so _much fun changing my appearance to different celebrities' just to freak out my friends on their birthdays."

Tonks laughed. "Done that. It is fun…until they try to get you into bed." She shot Maia a look that made them both laugh.

"Will you at least please try something on?" Andromeda sighed, holding up a demure but rather boring black jacquard dress.

"Um… No. I've vowed only to buy dressrobes directly from the designer of _Pleiades Inc._," Tonks sniffed, casting Maia an incredibly mischievous grin. "She's very exclusive."

"Oh, now I have to dress _you_ for your dates with Remus, too," Maia sighed, shaking her head.

"My what?"

"Who?" Andromeda asked, glancing curiously from Maia to Tonks. "You've met someone, Nymphadora?"

"I—" Tonks narrowed her eyes at Maia. "I'm _friends_ with someone incredibly wonderful, Mum."

"Remus… Remus Lupin," Andromeda said, with a discerning look at her daughter.

"Yes," Tonks huffed, with a touch of asperity as she added, "And if anyone can understand getting past prejudice, it's you, so I don't want to hear anything about his fluffy little problem."

"Darling, I've known you long enough now to know that if I disapprove of something, you'll go out of your way to do it," Andromeda said.

"So basically your mother knows if she forbids you to have any romantic inklings towards Remus, you'll just go out of your way to 'do' him," Maia said, keeping a straight face; Tonks snorted, bursting into laughter. Andromeda gave Maia a faintly disapproving but mostly amused look. "Although, by the way you two were flirting last night, I'd say I'm well on my way to collecting on the _second_ pool."

"Eh?"

"Oh, nothing," Maia said, waving a hand idly. A bundle of rich garnet-red velvet moved over to them. Maia quirked an eyebrow at it, until Opal's voice issued, muffled, from the folds of fabric: "Tonks! Tonks, I've found you fabric for a dress! Maia's going to make it for you."

"Am I?"

"Yes. _I _think you should make it an Arwen dress," Opal said, beaming at Maia with wide, sincere eyes, as Maia extricated her from the velvet. "Uncle Padfoot says red is the best colour in the world, and he says, 'especially for Black women'. And you're a Black woman, Uncle Padfoot says so even if you're not on the tapestry like Maia is. Uncle Padfoot says Black women have the right complexity for red."

"I think you mean _complexion_," Andromeda smiled indulgently. "And you are right, Opal, red was always a fabulous colour on you, Nymphadora."

"Shame I wasn't in Gryffindor," Tonks sighed. "For the tie."

"What House were you in?" Maia asked curiously.

"I was in Hufflepuff. Everyone says Hufflepuffs are a load of duffers, but, well, I was the only person they accepted into the Auror Academy for years," Tonks grinned. She put two fingers up in the vague direction of a display of bolts of fabric. "That's for you, everyone who thought I was an idiot for being a badger."

"Badger's the symbol for Hufflepuff, yeah?"

"Yep. Symbol for Hufflepuff, and carved all over your Hobbit-hole," Tonks smiled. "The de Lusignan family goes back to Hufflepuff in the female-line. Did you know that?"

"No, I didn't…" Maia frowned subtly at Tonks. "How did you know that?"

"Professor Dumbledore's got me looking into your—" Tonks broke off, glancing over at Maia. She blinked, licking her lips. She said softly, "He's got me looking into your mum."

Maia glanced over at Tonks. Professor Dumbledore was having an Auror look into _her_ mother? Balian de Lusignan. She'd thought everybody but her knew what had happened to her mother… Was there more to the story they hadn't realised? Surely Professor Dumbledore had the intelligence and ability to look into Balian… Why task a fledgling Auror with it?

"Yeah, er… Those vials if memory you lot found?" Tonks said sadly, her face falling, going slightly paler than usual as she accidentally upset a display of spools of silk thread. "After we had a look into the other ones, Professor Dumbledore asked me to…do some things for him."

"Oh," Maia said softly. She hadn't really thought about the vials of memory…the Pensieve…not unless she woke herself up in the middle of the night after a nightmare about the lake. Her _daddy_.

Her conversation with Sirius the other night came back to her, and she sighed, turning to the display of necklaces and bracelets. Yes, she had seen her father at his very _best_…but it was the most horrifying thing she had ever seen, and she would never forget it. As Sirius had said…to forget their sacrifices was an insult to the people who _hadn't_ lived.

"I've heard stories about Balian," Tonks said quietly, her expression thoughtful and sincere as she gazed at Maia. "She did it all _without_ the Auror training."

"I… I don't know anything about her," Maia admitted quietly. Tonks gave her a thoughtful look, nodding subtly.

"Maia, where are you meeting this girl?" Andromeda asked, examining several very pretty silk scarves.

"Outside _Flourish & Blotts_ later this afternoon," Maia said, sighing; she didn't anticipate enjoying another packed day manning the ticket-booth, but someone had to do it, and she had the best handwriting!

* * *

><p>At one o'clock, Andromeda and Tonks (still arguing over Tonks' propensity to wear the shortest skirts she could find) escorted Maia and Opal to <em>Mal's Record Shack<em>, where the twins were already setting up the stall in front of a crowd of people waiting to buy tickets.

"We'll go and buy you some ice-creams," Andromeda smiled, eyeing the crowd. "The sugar will give you a boost."

"Thanks," Fred grinned.

"Thank you, Mrs Tonks," George said, smiling.

"It's Andromeda, please," Andromeda smiled. "Opal, what flavour would you like?"

"Um…"

"Why don't you go with Andromeda and help pick one out?" Maia suggested, and she watched Opal dash off into the crowd, eager for some ice-cream, while Andromeda and Tonks followed in her wake.

"Have a nice morning shopping?" George asked, smiling, as he handed Maia the cake-tin she had filled with tags and braided bracelets.

"Watching Andromeda and Tonks argue about what is appropriate for Tonks to wear was…entertaining," Maia said thoughtfully, bringing out her stylus and a brand-new ledger, which was filled with detailed accounts on who had bought tickets, which kind, how much they had paid and using cash or a money-order, whether they had locators or not and which camping-section they had been designated.

"Did you buy anything?" George asked.

"Well…just some lengths of velvet. Opal's commissioned me to make dressrobes for Tonks," Maia said, rolling her eyes. "And I had to buy fabric for the uniforms."

"How are the designs coming?"

"Good," Maia nodded. "Your mother asked for five designs, but I've narrowed it down to three already, which is easier on me. I just need a poll for the _colour_ scheme."

"Acid forget-me-not out of the question?" Fred asked, using his wand to open the cardboard box they had filled with information packets they had put together.

"I think so," Maia said, smiling. "I'm trying to design the uniforms so they don't _look_ like uniforms…so the kids can pair the different pieces with normal clothes. Just to make it easier on the parents… Anyway, are we ready?"

"Tickets, information packets, you've got the trackers," George said, glancing at the table; Maia sat between the twins. On her left, Fred had the information packets; George manned the till. It fell to Maia, with the best handwriting, to fill out the ledger and authenticate the tickets as well as write names on the trackers.

"We've got a float, yes?" Maia asked, glancing at George, who nodded, ejecting the till tray, which flashed silver, gold and bronze in the intense sunlight.

"We're ready to go!" Fred grinned. He stood up on his stool. "Everyone—_BELT UP!_ Right, if you're looking to buy tickets to the _Radio_ _Rock _music-festival on the eighteenth and nineteenth of August, please form an _orderly_ queue, and to help us get through you all quicker, please have your money out, and know which type of ticket you want."

"You'll see on the board here," George called, indicating a second poster they had made up yesterday afternoon between shifts here, showing the prices of things and what the cost included. "Single tickets are six Galleons apiece, that includes two days' worth of entertainment plus a pitch in the camping-zones. And all money goes directly to the under-elevens school for werewolf children."

"Now if you _don't_ have a tent, there is a communal marquee set up for witches and wizards, that's an extra nine Sickles, as there are limited spaces available," Fred called. "The family ticket is fifteen Galleons, which includes a pitch in the family-only camping zone, which will be quiet after ten p.m., and includes one free Arts & Crafts for each kid."

"As advertised on _Radio Rock_, we encourage you bringing picnics to get you through the weekend," George said. "However, there will be food stalls on the premises. Fifty-percent of the proceeds of each food stall will go straight to the school, as will the proceeds from the stalls for _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_, _Pleiades Inc._, Madam Rosmerta's pop-up pub, Florean Fortescue's parlour, _Mal's Record Pavilion_, and the sweetshop. So _bring your money_ with you!"

"Definitely bring your money with you; for those of you with kids, there will be a lot of entertainment available for them, including winged-palomino rides, Arts & Crafts, Quidditch lessons with several popular League stars, and a Triwizard Maze," Fred called.

"And if any of you require transportation to get to the venue, we are selling tickets to the Knight Bus, and Portkeys; the Knight Bus has created a special timetable for the weekend, and Portkeys are set up in strategic towns in the UK and Ireland," George called. "All the information's on the board, and we can give you the Bus timetables and Portkey locations."

"Right, who's first?" Maia called, smoothing out the page of her ledger. Most people bought single tickets, to begin with; families doing their shopping for Hogwarts were tugged over by older children who had been listening to _Radio Rock_, and the parents stayed to read the entertainments available at the festival, and because they recognised the twins' and Maia's company-names from _Witch Weekly_.

Fred got into a few tussles with ignorant wizards who shouted abuse about werewolves; Maia sorted out the problems with a few well-placed hexes, and sent them on their way after a lecture on prejudice and ignorance.

"—what are these trackers you mention on the poster?"

"Oh," Maia smiled, tugging the cake-tin over. "Depending on the age and gender of your children, we'll give them each a necklace or a bracelet; we write their names on the card, and they appear on a giant map of the area the festival is being held in. As long as your kids don't take the trackers off, you'll be able to find them by speaking their names to the giant map, and it'll hone in on their locations," Maia said, smiling, as she showed the wizard who had asked a handful of the 'Kneazle-collars' she had created as nametags during Harry and Neville's party, and the braided, beaded friendship bracelets that were so ridiculously easy and cheap to make, she'd done an entire collection of designs.

"They look like cat-collars," the wizard smirked.

"The necklaces? They're supposed to. Tell your children they're playing Kneazles and Cerberus," Maia chuckled. "The necklaces are more for the younger kids; the bracelets are for the older set, young teens. Or whichever you think your kids would wear…"

"I'll take two of the bracelets and one of the necklaces," the wizard said, bringing out his money-bag. "A pink necklace, if you've got one."

"I do," Maia smiled. "Any preference for the bracelets?"

"One is for my son," the wizard said.

"So a manlier one," Maia nodded, digging out a navy and emerald bracelet.

"Exactly," the wizard winked.

"Okay, so that's one family ticket," Maia murmured, writing it down in the ledger. "May I have your name, and the names of your children?" He gave his name, and Maia wrote it down in the ledger with the names of his children, which she then wrote on the little metal-backed card plaques on the necklace and bracelets. She activated the charm that allowed the names to show up on the enlarged map they had been working on, and handed the wizard his family-ticket and a packet of information, including advertisements from the different stalls, lists of entertainers, the special events and a map that changed its labels for up-to-the-minute accuracy of what was going on up onstage, what crafts were being made in the Quiet Tent in the kids' area, opening-times for the stalls.

"One family ticket, please," said a tall, svelte woman with such white-blonde hair, Maia was sure she could have been the Snow Queen. Either side of her, the twins visibly tensed, their navy eyes on the boy standing beside the pale woman.

"Mother," said an annoyed voice; a very pale boy with white-blonde hair and rather pointy features sighed impatiently. "We already talked about this; we don't _want_ a family-ticket."

"Draco, the family ticket is far more value for money," the woman said.

"Tell her," the boy demanded of Maia, frowning.

"Excuse me?"

"I think my very impolite son was asking you to explain the difference between family tickets and individual ones," the blonde woman said, casting her son a look.

"The family-ticket basically only ensures you're in a camping-area with _only_ other families," Maia said. Why did the woman look familiar? "We didn't want there to be issues with older teenagers and young-professionals making trouble for themselves by upsetting people with young families. At ten p.m., the family camping-area will have its speakers muted, so the noise-level will accommodate for sleeping children. People buying family-tickets are also provided with necklaces or bracelets to put on their kids, to keep track of them via an enlarged map of the area."

"And the individual ticket?"

"You'll be designated a camping-area, no children," Maia said. "If you don't have your own tent, we still have forty-three spots left in the communal marquee, they're nine Sickles apiece and a sleeping-bag and pillow will be provided you for the duration of the event."

"Mother, let's just buy some of the individual tickets," the boy said. "We won't want to be stuck with all the _babies_."

The blonde woman sighed. "Very well. How many was it, Draco?"

"Me, Crabbe, Goyle, Theodore—and Pansy, Daphne and her sister," Draco said, with a slight grimace at the girl Pansy's name.

"Seven individual tickets, please," the woman said, gazing at Maia.

"You'll all want to be in the same camping-area," Maia said, glancing at the pale boy, who nodded.

"We'll have two tents," he said, arms crossed over his front, frowning at her.

"Okay," Maia nodded. "All of the names, please, I need to write them on the tickets."

"Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle…Theodore Nott…Pansy Parkinson…Daphne Greengrass…Astoria Greengrass," the boy said. "And Malfoy. Draco Malfoy." Maia smirked to herself as she wrote the names down carefully in the ledger. _Bond. James Bond_.

"Oh my god, I am so jealous of my feet!" someone gasped, and Maia laughed as she glanced up.

"You caved and went back for the boots!" she chuckled, as Tonks approached, doing a funny little dance; she was wearing her brand-new high-gloss garnet-gold dragon-hide boots, knee-high with metallic etched ombre heels and a flaming Chinese Fireball enamelled with studs up the sides.

"See, if I didn't have any self-control, I would've snapped these up the first time I saw them and marched these babies home!" Tonks sighed, pulling several poses to admire her new footwear from different angles. She also carried an ice-cream. "Three months I've been lusting after these babies! And that half-off sign was just too sexy to deny."

Maia laughed. "Fred, seven information packets, please."

"Where's our ice-cream?" Fred asked, scanning Tonks.

"Mum thought it was best she carry 'em over," Tonks said, rolling her eyes.

"I'm parched," Fred said, licking his lips and pouting.

"Fred! Packets, please!"

"Alright, woman! Are you always this bossy?"

"Only when I'm overworked and being ignored," Maia said, whacking him upside the head as she hopped over several boxes to the open one, digging out seven information packets herself. When she plopped down into her seat again, Fred was licking an ice-cream, completely ignorant of what was going on in front of the table.

Andromeda had appeared, bearing ice-creams, Opal trailing her, licking her own little cone; she had handed Fred and George their treats before realising who stood waiting for their tickets.

Andromeda and the pale woman were _incredibly_ alike in features. Standing beside Andromeda, Maia suddenly realised who the pale woman was. She had seen those faces—much younger—in photographs in Number Twelve.

"_Oh_!" she gasped, gazing from Andromeda to her _sister_, Narcissa.

"What's going on here?" George murmured; he wasn't the only one gazing from Andromeda to the pale woman; the pale boy, Draco, was shooting Andromeda a very curious look.

"That's… I think that's Andromeda's younger-sister," Maia murmured, eyes on the two older women. "Narcissa."

"Malfoy's mum," George remarked, with a slight frown. He glanced from Maia to the two older women, at Tonks happily slurping her ice-cream. The tension radiating from Andromeda and Narcissa was palpable.

As Andromeda broke eye-contact to hand Maia her ice-cream, she said, "Eat it quickly, before it melts."

"Unlikely," George murmured, watching the way Andromeda's spine had gone rigid, Mrs Malfoy's features icy, very cool… Tonks broke the tension, as usual.

"Yum, yum, yum, I love—" Tonks broke off as her scoop of ice-cream fell to the cobblestones, already starting to melt. "Aw!" She wailed childishly, "_Mum!_"

"You're such a freak," Maia laughed. "Ow!" She yelped, rubbing her head, as Tonks cuffed her. "Andromeda!"

"Nymphadora—" Andromeda sighed, glancing away from her estranged sister.

Tonks hissed at her mother like an angry cat, for Andromeda calling her 'Nymphadora' in public. "It's _Tonks_! Opal, bite her!"

"I'm not allowed to nibble!" Opal cried, wide-eyed, and Maia laughed as George choked on his ice-cream.

"Someday, your future boyfriends are going to be very disappointed about that," Tonks said, reaching down to pat Opal's head—consequently getting ice-cream all over her hair. "Oops."

"Nymphadora, go and sit down, admire your new boots," Andromeda sighed gently. "Before you cause any more havoc."

"Me? _Me_ cause havoc?" Tonks said indignantly, and she muttered to herself, pouting at her now empty ice-cream cone as she threw herself into a deck-chair. It promptly collapsed, and Maia clapped a hand to her mouth as she started laughing.

"That's nice—that's really nice, I bring you ice-cream, Maia, and all you can is laugh at me!" Tonks grunted, trying to extricate herself from the skeleton of the deck-chair.

"I'm sorry!" Maia chuckled, as George went to help Tonks clamber off the floor.

"Maia." The blonde woman, Mrs Narcissa Malfoy, had spoken, and Maia glanced up; she was still writing out the names onto seven individual tickets.

"Yes?"

"You are Maia."

"She was on the cover of your _Witch Weekly_, Mother," the pale boy said, gazing at Maia now with undisguised curiosity, taking in her features almost voraciously.

Andromeda glanced from Maia to her younger-sister. "Narcissa, this is Maia. Regulus' daughter." The blonde woman's pale eyes widened, and she glanced from Maia to Andromeda and back. The pale boy frowned subtly.

"Regulus had… Maia… The name on the tapestry…"

"Indeed," Andromeda said coolly, probably remembering, Maia thought, when her own name had been blasted off the tapestry Kreacher had removed from the drawing-room. "Maia, this is my…sister. Narcissa."

"Yes, hello, Maia," Narcissa said, eyeing Maia now with the same intensity as her son.

"Hello," Maia smiled. She glanced at the boy.

"This is my son, Draco," Narcissa said, gesturing to the pale boy, who nodded, giving Maia a considering look, though by the way he eyed the twins with a rather nasty smirk, he'd already made up his mind about something. Maia nodded at him, writing the last name on a ticket, before giving them all a magical watermark.

Tonks, who had come up behind Maia, was standing with her arms folded over her chest, frowning at the blonde woman.

"Narcissa," Andromeda said, frostily; she gestured at Tonks. "This is my daughter, Nymphadora. She just graduated from the Auror Academy. Dora…my sister Narcissa, and her son Draco. I think Draco, you must still be at Hogwarts?" Draco nodded, eyeing Tonks curiously; yes, she was an Auror, and yes, Aurors did dress like that.

"Love family-reunions," Fred muttered, a slow grin forming on his face as he watched the frosty behaviour of the two sisters.

"Should've brought popcorn," George said quietly.

"—_will you hurry up_—" came from the crowd, and Maia sighed.

"I'm sorry…that's forty-two Galleons, please," Maia said, and Narcissa broke eye-contact from Andromeda; she had done a sweep of Tonks, taking in the eclectic glam-Wizard-punk outfit she rocked, the special-effects to her hair, the bracelets at her wrists. "As long as you didn't need anything else? Knight Bus tickets?"

"No, I shall Apparate with Draco. Do you accept money-orders?" Narcissa asked, gazing at Maia.

"As long as they're authentic," Maia shrugged, smiling. She slipped the seven information packets and the seven watermarked tickets into a brown letter-envelope to keep them all safe, and George carried out the transaction for the money-order with the till.

"Enjoy the festival—and remember to remind your friends to bring their pocket-money. There will be food stalls and shops set up in the venue," Maia said. "All the information is in the packets."

Straight-backed, Narcissa received her receipt and she and her son walked off; Maia could see Draco shooting his mother several looks, but neither of them spoke until they were out of hearing.

"Well!" Andromeda sighed, glancing away from her younger-sister to Maia. "If you're all set here, I suppose I'd better be off…"

"You're leaving?" Tonks asked. "We haven't even gone up to the Crescent."

"Darling, I don't think I can handle the shops in the Crescent today," Andromeda said, leaning in to kiss her daughter's cheek. "I should get going." After thanking her for their ice-creams, they watched Andromeda disappear down the Alley back toward the Leaky Cauldron.

"Wonder how long it's been since Mum saw her sister," Tonks said, watching her mother go.

"Probably a _very_ long time," Maia said quietly. "Are you staying to help, or what?"

"Nah, I've got stuff to do this afternoon; and I'd better get Opal back," Tonks said. As she lifted Opal onto her hip, she grinned at Maia; it looked so natural for Tonks to have a child on her hip, especially Opal, who had somewhere managed to find child-size fishnet fingerless gloves sewn with tiny fuchsia beads that glowed and sparkled like the tiniest fireworks, and a tiny pair of glossy multicoloured dragon-hide boots that had once been Tonks' with the wackiest laces they could find in Gladrag's. Maia quickly took a photograph. "Send me a note, let me know how it goes this weekend; I'm having Sunday-lunch with Mum and Dad this week."

"Be good for Tonks," Maia said to Opal. "Don't let her trip up or let her skirt catch a thread."

"Yeah, or this lot will have a show while they're waiting," Tonks said, grinning, as she glanced over her shoulder at the crowd waiting for tickets. "It's _laundry-day_."

"Oh dear!" Maia laughed, grinning. _Laundry-day_ meant Tonks had run out of clean knickers.

"Alright, we'll see you _anon_," Tonks grinned, and she left them to it.

By the time they closed up the stall for their afternoon break, they had sold one thousand, two hundred and twelve tickets. While the twins packed up, taking the early-afternoon's take back to Grimmauld Place for safekeeping, Maia met Aliona Fitzwulf.

Remus hadn't mentioned that Aliona Fitzwulf had 'River Song' hair. Slim and rather small for her age, she made up for her lack of mass with a gorgeous mane of curls that glinted in the sunshine as she waited outside _Flourish & Blotts_. She had an open, sincere face, and perhaps the pain she had suffered gave her the sense of levity in her eyes that looked so uncanny in so young a person's face.

She was easy to distinguish as Aliona, only because she was alone, carrying her Hogwarts letter _as well as _the letters Maia had sent her; she also looked like she was trying to make herself smaller, watching the crowd of shoppers almost warily, as if expecting someone to pounce and start shouting.

"Aliona?" Maia smiled kindly as she approached, and the little girl glanced up at her with hazel eyes; there were freckles on her nose and at the far reaches of her cheekbones. They were incredibly pretty. Her entire face lit up with warmth when Maia said her name, and she smiled shyly. "Hello, Aliona. I'm Maia."

"Thank you for coming," Aliona said quietly, smiling through her eyes rather than with her lips.

"You're very welcome," Maia smiled. "Have you got your list?" Aliona showed her the bunch of letters. "Excellent. Shall we go? Violet and her daughter Iris are going to meet us in Madam Malkin's."

"Alright," Aliona said, smiling shyly.

It wasn't normal for Maia to play benefactor to underprivileged children, but she _was_ a girl, and if life with the twins had taught her anything, it was how to get people to open up. She herself was far less introverted than she had been at the beginning of the summer, thanks to the joint influence of Sirius and the twins. She remembered what it felt like to go to a brand-new school, though she had never had to go away from home; she got Aliona chatting about things, her life, her interests, what she looked forward to about Hogwarts.

Maia took Aliona to Ollivander's first. It took twenty minutes for Aliona's wand to choose her; she was absolutely _thrilled_ to have it once Maia had given Mr Ollivander six Galleons for it. Aliona couldn't stop thanking her; Maia reminded her she didn't have to say thank you, it was actually, honestly, a pleasure to be able to share her wealth with someone who needed it. But Aliona had been brought up with good manners, was very polite, and at times utterly reclusive due to the secluded nature of her upbringing.

A trip to the Wizarding-equipment shop came after Ollivander's, to help Aliona pick out a trunk and a standard size-two pewter cauldron for Potions lessons; sensible of the fact that Aliona was going away from home for the first time in her life, Maia wanted to make things a little more special, more personal; she had Aliona pick out a length of fabric in _Gladrag's_ that she loved, with which she then lined the inside of the trunk with using magic, and embossed Aliona's name on the top of the trunk.

They went back to _Flourish & Blotts_ with Aliona's new trunk, in which they stored all Aliona's brand-new schoolbooks. In the stationery-shop, they bought rolls of parchment, colourful composition-books, quills and pencils, bottles of ink—Maia encouraged Aliona to pick out several different fun colours and special-effects ones—and a set of colouring-pencils, Maia remembering Professor Sprout's projects and homework assignments. Inside the Apothecary, Maia bought more ingredients for her cosmetics while Aliona looked around at the jars of ingredients, her mouth slightly open with wonder. Aliona was supplied with a standard set of beginner's Potion ingredients, and when they met Violet with Iris outside _Madam Malkin's_, Violet murmured it might be a good idea to let the two girls rub along by themselves while they bought their robes; Maia slipped off to buy several more things, while Violet went to buy Iris' books.

Based on the idea of the twins' gift-bags and the First Aid kits, Maia went around Diagon Alley while the girls got their Hogwarts uniforms, and put together a gift for Aliona, with things from around the different shops that she thought would be of use or appreciated in the first weeks of being away from her home, away from her parents. She popped back to Number Twelve to the storage-room, where she kept the now-finished designs for book-bags, and picked out a smallish red suede messenger-bag beaded with the design of a phoenix; she had designed the bag to perfectly fit a textbook and composition-books lengthwise, with a subtle Extending Charm on it to keep from the contents becoming too heavy for the carrier. She picked up a few extra little things from her shop, making a note of each item, and wrote in her journal the contents of the bag she had put together, and met Aliona back inside Madam Malkin's.

"Did you get everything?" Maia asked, smiling, glancing at Aliona and Iris, both of whom were smiling and seemed a lot friendlier, less shy than before.

"Yes," Aliona smiled shyly. "Thank you."

"Aliona, I told you, you don't need to keep thanking me," Maia smiled warmly. "How many skirts and things did you get…?" One of the staff had provided Aliona with an extra skirt, two extra blouses, a cardigan and a warm vest. Maia paid for everything, and she and Violet let the way to _Gladrag's_, where they went about purchasing practical things like thermal vests, tights, warm socks and embroidered nametags for the girls' uniforms. Maia had had to do this kind of shopping for herself when she was eleven, too; when she had gone from primary school to secondary, with a change in uniform and all of that. She'd done it by herself, and wished there had been someone to go with her, to think about the sensible, adult things she shouldn't have had to think about at the age of eleven.

The girls had fun giggling with each other, looking at the hair-accessories and patterns for clothes, all the different kinds of beads and pretty things they could find.

"It was a good idea to bring those two together," Violet said, glancing up from the display of every kind of sock that could be imagined, at the two girls, who were in fits of hysterics over the parrot-patterned socks that relayed everything they said to them. Their laughter, echoed by the parrots, created a cacophony, ringing around the room.

"Well, I'm just glad they'll have someone they know in their first lessons," Maia said; that had terrified her, the thought of not knowing a single person in her lessons when she had started year seven.

Maia regretted they hadn't been in contact with Aliona before Harry and Neville's party; by the time Iris left with her mother, she and Aliona were very friendly, giggly and close. They could have spent the entire day together, getting to know each other before they started school together. Violet liked Maia's idea for the book-bag so much that she commissioned Maia to put together one for Iris, which gave Maia something to do the following day between shifts working the ticket-booth.

They had purchased all Aliona's school-things by the time Maia was due back to help the twins man the ticket-booth; but Aliona's mother wasn't yet off work, so Maia patted the deck-chair that George had repaired after it collapsed under Tonks; Aliona sat down with her copy of _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade One_, alternately reading and picking out bracelets and necklaces for the family-pass buyers. In between selling tickets—there were a few lulls, and a lot of busy spurts—Maia labelled the things she had bought to put in Aliona's book-bag, and sewed Aliona's name labels onto her uniform, using colourful thread and fun stitches, so by the time Mr and Mrs Fitzwulf arrived to collect their daughter, all her new things were labelled, some of her books broken into, and she was laughing giddily at the twins' banter.

"Maia Black?" the woman asked, and Maia smiled, standing up; she had brought out her knitting, in between selling tickets, now that she had finished labelling all Aliona's clothes.

"Yes. Mrs Fitzwulf?" Maia smiled, shaking her hand.

"Yes. It's _lovely_ to meet you," Mrs Fitzwulf beamed; Mr Fitzwulf was watching his daughter laugh and flirt innocently with the twins, almost _stunned_.

"And you, too," Maia smiled. "I, uh…hope you don't mind, I got a bit carried away in Gladrag's. I sewed all the labels into Aliona's new clothes, and I, er…put this together for her." She lifted the suede bag.

"What's this?" Mrs Fitzwulf smiled, accepting the bag; she unzipped the top, peering inside.

"It's, um… Just a few things, some fun things, things she might need in the first few weeks away from home," Maia said shyly, glancing at Mrs Fitzwulf, who was smiling warmly into the bag.

Maia had filled the bag with a parchment-cone full of tiny things from _Gambol & Jape's_; a crochet needle, knitting-needles and yarn and an easy pattern-book; a miniature sewing-kit in a hand-sewn needle-book, with a strawberry-shaped pincushion; a handmade headband and shower-cap (leopard-print, with a gold satin bow); a small tin from the sweetshop she had asked to be filled with different kinds of their most popular sweets, and a box of Chocolate Frogs; a set of colouring-pencils; a full set of stationery including five different patterns, multicoloured polka-dot, the _Talon's_ First Nine 'Thinking Caps', winged palominos, Snitches and navy-edged glittering constellations; and the First Aid kit Maia had customised for Aliona.

"I thought…Aliona could share out the Chocolate Frogs on the train, trading the cards would be a great conversation-starter with other first years," Maia said. "And the, uh…the stationery's so she can write to you, of course. Aliona liked the look of some of the sewing projects and knitting…so I thought, when she's not doing her homework, it'll give her something to do…"

"And the things from Gambol & Jape's?" Mrs Fitzwulf smiled.

"Well, I thought they might…you know, be a bit of fun," Maia blushed, smiling, and Mrs Fitzwulf chuckled.

"What's this?" her husband asked, plucking the purple snakeskin First Aid kit out of the bag.

"Oh, we've seen those advertised," Mrs Fitzwulf smiled.

"_Customised_," Mr Fitzwulf said, pulling a face at Aliona as he flashed the gold embossing on the First Aid kit to her; she beamed and came over, peering curiously at the bag, and the First Aid kit.

"I, uh… I think I might've gone a little overboard," Maia said, flushing embarrassedly. Mr Fitzwulf was already opening the First Aid kit so he and Aliona could examine the contents, making thoughtful noises, grinning at the Skiving Sweets, coaxing Aliona to try the hair-dye stick.

"Very useful," Mr Fitzwulf said, plucking out the little diagram showing how to tie a tie. "I almost strangled myself in the first few weeks at school, trying to get my tie on. Eventually one of the prefects took pity on me, but this would've had me sorted!" Both Mr and Mrs Fitzwulf looked very tired, almost haggard, though their clothing was kept immaculately neat and clean, in the same way Remus had taken care of his belongings. They seemed to regain new life when their daughter was around, and obvious affection poured from them. They liked seeing their daughter happy, and while Mr Fitzwulf chatted with Aliona about the things they had bought—she showed him the lining of her trunk with enthusiasm—and the contents of the book-bag Maia had put together for Aliona, and the First Aid kit, Mrs Fitzwulf talked with Maia.

"We really can't thank you enough for doing this for Aliona," Mrs Fitzwulf said, gazing at Maia.

"You know, Aliona keeps thanking me, but she doesn't have to. You don't have to," Maia smiled. She glanced at Mrs Fitzwulf. "It shouldn't have to be like this…"

"Well…thank you," Mrs Fitzwulf said sadly. "Thank you for not…looking upon my daughter as if she is a monster."

"Oh, I've met monsters before," Maia said, watching Aliona. "My primary-school class was full of beasts. Aliona's a very sweet girl." Mrs Fitzwulf smiled tremulously. "And that _hair_!"

"Will you… You've done so much already," Mrs Fitzwulf said, glancing from her daughter to Maia, rather teary-eyed. "Would you…"

"I'll keep an eye on her," Maia smiled. "I'm sure she'll do fine. And I'll cram all the chocolate in her she can take after the full-moon."

"Professor Dumbledore says you are the granddaughter of Godfrey de Lusignan," Mrs Fitzwulf said, eyeing her closely.

"Oh… That. Yes. I mean, I am his granddaughter—but I was…well, I was two when he was murdered," Maia said quietly, her cheeks flushing. "I didn't know anything about him being Minister for Magic."

"Then how is it you grew up with his same ideals?" Mrs Fitzwulf asked curiously. "Your liberal nature towards werewolves…"

"Well, I was raised by a Squib in the Muggle world," Maia said softly, twitching her lips thoughtfully. "I didn't grow up with the prejudices of Wizards… I didn't grow up with any prejudices, really…except playground prejudice against gingers, you know…" Mrs Fitzwulf chuckled, as Maia watched the twins.

"Your friend Remus says Hogwarts is the best chance Aliona has," Mrs Fitzwulf said quietly, her eyes on her daughter.

"For education and socialisation, definitely," Maia said, nodding. "And especially with the work Remus is doing to repeal Ministry legislation… There's no reason Aliona shouldn't have a wonderful life…only people's ignorance."

Mrs Fitzwulf gazed at Maia as if nobody had ever spoken to her that way. Maia supposed perhaps she hadn't.

With too many repetitions of thank-you, Aliona went home with her parents, her new trunk shrunk into her father's pocket, her new book-bag and its contents slung over her back, Mr and Mrs Fitzwulf promising to see them all at the weekend to help out at the festival.

They sold another six hundred and ninety-three tickets on Saturday evening. Exhausted, they packed up at eight p.m. and made their way back to Number Twelve. After dinner, Maia totted up the number of tickets they had sold—in total, over Friday and Saturday, they had sold three thousand, five hundred and five.

Sunday was not quite as long a day as Saturday and Friday; they sold one thousand and six hundred tickets. And what happened during the day, who Maia _met_, was far more significant to her than anything else that happened that day.

Almost ready to pack up for the day, a tall, slim girl with _beautiful_ dark-red hair and an excellent application of soft peach blush approached the stall. Tired, yawning, squinting in the sun, there was nothing too memorable about her, honestly, before she'd asked for her tickets, with a melodic Scottish accent, and gave her name. "Rosie Cutler."

Maia pulled three tickets from the last of their print—they'd done an emergency print overnight, another thousand tickets, and had only fifty-odd left—and started writing the names down in her ledger, and on the tickets.

Rosie Cutler… _Rosie_.

Maia glanced up quickly, staring. She pushed her sunglasses further up her nose and stared. "_Rosie_."

"Yeah."

"Rosie Cutler."

"Er, yeah," the girl said, giving her an enigmatic look.

"No. No _way_! From Kingseaves Primary?" Maia asked. The girl frowned.

"Yeah…" she said warily. "How'd you know that?" Maia pulled her sunglasses off, indicating herself with the stems.

"Maia Black." It was _Rosie_! She scanned dark eyes over Maia, before her jaw dropped.

"Oh my _god_! _Maia_?! You're a fucking _witch_?!"

"What the hell, you are, too!" Rosie froze, her expression thoughtful.

"That does explain the toupee. And the swings. And the pygmy hippos unleashed from their pen at Whipsnade Zoo…"

Maia gaped. "I'd completely forgotten about the pygmy hippos!"

"That _was_ you, then?" Rosie grinned.

"It must've been!" Maia laughed.

"I told my mum and dad it wasn't me!" Rosie said, laughing. "Oh my god!" They laughed, and Maia leapt up from her seat to hug Rosie. The last time she had seen Rosie, they had been…eight, maybe nine?

"Hey, do you have my raspberry scented gel-pen?" Maia asked, and Rosie laughed.

"Er, no, probably not," she laughed.

"So you're _Scottish_, now?" Maia chuckled at her accent.

"Well, Mum and Dad moved us up there in year three," Rosie shrugged. "Being Scottish works for me, I have an excuse to be angry more often than normal."

"That's called being a woman!" Fred called as he and George packed up the posters.

"Women aren't angry for any other reason than there are just some days when we're not inclined to take your shit," Rosie called back, and Maia chuckled.

"That's Fred," Maia said, glancing at the twins, then back at Rosie. "He wasn't caught young enough to tame."

"I see," Rosie chuckled, eyeing Fred again, more closely.

"So, you go to Hogwarts now, then?" Maia asked.

"No, actually, I start this year," Rosie grinned excitedly. "Mum and Dad tutored me at home."

"God that must've been awful," Maia grimaced.

"Yeah, it was," Rosie pulled a face. "I love 'em, but there's just sometimes I wanted to smash their faces in."

"I know how that feels!" Fred grunted, and squawked as he fell over backwards over the cardboard box George had just shoved behind him, completely by accident.

"What about you?" Rosie asked, glancing at Maia. "You a Hogwarts veteran?"

"No, actually, I start this year, too," Maia grinned.

"Sixth year?" Rosie asked.

"No, fifth," Maia said. "I, uh…I've been doing up to O.W.L.-level study this summer, but I went to Kings Secondary. And King Alfred's Sixth Form. I just sat my A-Levels."

"Oh my god, you're like a proper Muggle!" Rosie laughed, tucking a lock of hair away from her lips. "What the hell were you doing, not going to Hogwarts?"

"Diane was ill," Maia said, shrugging delicately. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw George hastily gesturing to Rosie, drawing his hand across his throat. Rosie glanced from George to Maia, and her features showed comprehension.

"I'm so sorry, Maia," she said earnestly. "I really liked Diane. I still have all those books she made for me when I was having trouble with my spelling." Maia chuckled softly, smiling.

"Yeah, I do, too," she smiled. Tomorrow she was set to take delivery of the freshly-printed workbooks she had copied and edited from the ones Diane had made for her, for spelling, maths, writing and languages. Maia was working on her own workbook now, though it wasn't something to write in as much as read out of. She glanced at Rosie. "Hey… Do you want to stay for a drink, catch up?"

"Yeah!" Rosie grinned. "Absolutely!"

"Maia, we've got to get to Gringott's before it closes," George reminded her, as he and Fred packed the last of everything away.

"Oh, shit, right," Maia swore, glancing down the Alley toward the pearly-white marble building.

"You go, I'll wait," Rosie grinned.

"Great!" Maia grinned. "When I get back, I'll let you guess who _Rebecca_ let herself get knocked up by!"

"Rebecca?!" Rosie gaped. Rebecca had been the prissiest little goody-two-shoes in their class when they had been in primary-school, least likely to go by way of the Chav and let herself get pregnant at _sixteen_. "_No_!"

"Oh, just wait, it's gonna shock the hell out of you!" Maia grinned. She finished writing out Rosie's tickets, handed over everything she needed, and while the twins escorted Rosie to the _Sunflower_—Fred checking Rosie out unashamedly as she strode in front of him with George, who was asking for details on Maia as a little girl—Maia made her way to Gringott's.

She had set up an account in Gringott's for the W.I.N. Under-Elevens School Fund, to which all money-orders were made payable, and before they closed up for the day, Maia made a deposit of the money-orders and the cash they had collected over the last three days.

They had sold four hundred and fifty tickets to the Knight Bus—each ticket to the festival was a flat-rate of ten Sickles, five of which would go straight to W.I.N.; that fifty-percent gave them one hundred and thirty-two Galleons, four Sickles and nineteen Knuts. With one hundred places in the communal marquee sold at nine Sickles apiece, that had gained them nine hundred Sickles, or fifty-three Galleons. Which equated to one hundred and eighty-five Galleons, four Sickles and nineteen Knuts already for the fund. That didn't include the ticket-sales.

Today, they had sold a further one thousand and six hundred tickets, including four-hundred family-passes. That meant they had sold a total of 4,629 tickets over the three days, of which 1,094 were family-passes. Single tickets at six Galleons apiece, family-passes at fifteen Galleons, that equated to 37,620 Galleons.

Doing the maths in her head with the current exchange-rate of £24.06p to every Galleon, while she waited for everything to be deposited, she figured out she had held in her hands the equivalent of £905,137.20p.

With a bank-statement about the contents of the W.I.N. Under-Elevens School Fund account, she made her way excitedly to the _Sunflower_, where George handed her a cider and she quirked an eyebrow at Fred and Rosie blatantly flirting with each other.

"So, tell me, who did Rebecca shag?"

"Put down your drink first, I don't want it all over me," Maia grinned, taking a sip of her own drink before setting it on the little table between them; the twins lazed about on their chairs, grinning tiredly. Rosie set her glass down. Maia took a breath, let it out, fixed Rosie in the eye, and said, "_Liam_."

Rosie shrieked, and Maia pulled a face, shaking her head and shuddering. "Oh, god, please tell me he's at least grown up into Liam _Hemsworth_!"

"No, he is still very much the exact same ignorant, _putrescent_ Liam he was in year-three," Maia said, shuddering.

"_Liam_ and Rebecca?"

"There's no accounting for taste," Maia said, pulling a face as she shivered.

"That poor kid!" Rosie gaped, her expression comical. "Who'd you go for, then?"

"Well, you remember Thomas? Really, really cute, the curly hair, blue eyes?"

"Yeah!"

"Well, he dumped me and I went out with Arthur for a while," Maia said, and Rosie laughed, clapping a hand to her eyes. "Then…_Matthew_—Tallis, not Darfur—Ioan, Andrew and then…then _William_."

"For a little girl who used to be such an awkward-looking thing, you snagged _Matthew Tallis_," Rosie grinned, raising a hand for Maia to slap.

"Yep. He's been my longest relationship. And sexiest," Maia smirked, and Rosie laughed giddily.

"Is he still cute?"

"He's_ mouth-watering_," Maia said, after a second's pause to think of the right word.

"You've got pictures?"

"I do. I'll have to find the censored ones," Maia said, her cheeks blushing, as Rosie beamed proudly, and the twins both turned to Maia, their eyebrows raised.

"You saucy little trollop!" Fred blurted, and Rosie laughed; Maia pulled a face, then schooled her features so she looked thoughtful and curious, gazing past his shoulder.

"Hey, Fred, isn't that the bassist from _Anti-Pureblood League_?" she asked, and Fred _legged it_ out of the _Sunflower_. Maia watched him go with a gentle smile.

"Nice," George grinned, chuckling. "So, Rosie, about Maia being an awkward-looking kid…"

"Too much hair and sharp elbows," Rosie smirked, grinning.

"Do _you_ have pictures?" George asked casually, eyeing Rosie with a wink.

"I'll get my mum to dig up school photos," Rosie grinned. "There should be a load from my birthday-parties. And, possibly, some of Maia freeing the herd of pygmy-hippos at the zoo."

"That bassist isn't here!" Fred crowed, scowling, as he strode back into the _Sunflower_.

"No, but I've never seen you move so fast!"

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: I hadn't read this in a while, I amused myself! Please review.


	40. Chapter 40

**A.N.**: I've had requests to update my stories, and I know a lot of people adore _Pleiades_, it's one of my favourites too, but I've been finishing up my last year at university and trying to find a job, so… Well, here's another chapter, the fortieth! I'm coming up close behind _Harriet_, which has sixty-one chapters—it's another story I have to look at updating, but it reached Christmastime in the story and it's…June, I can't get into it yet!

For those of you who read my other stories, today I've updated _The Judgement of Actaeon_, _Where There's Smoke_ as well as _Uilleam_ and I'm working on _Jekyll and Hyde_. If any of you watch _Teen Wolf_, I'm considering writing a new story for it, giving Jackson a twin-sister. She's either for Stiles or Isaac. And I need a part-time job/profession for Mary in _Jekyll and Hyde_; she's Allison's older-sister, and a werewolf.

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><p><strong>The Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_40_

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><p>The fact that Maia had met her childhood friend—the fact that Rosie had been a <em>witch<em> all along—had been just one of the many highlights of early-August.

Rosie hadn't been able to stay very long in Diagon Alley, just long enough to melt any awkwardness that might have cropped up from not seeing each other in _years_, as there hadn't been time to wonder whether they'd like each other if they ever saw each other again, because their meeting had been such a surprise.

Rosie had a Muggle-born father and a half-blood mother, so she had gone to primary-school and had grown up clued in to Muggle culture as well as being influenced by her parents' status as a witch and wizard. Like Maia, she had been to several Muggle music-festivals—Edinburgh being her favourite—and loved to read; wanted to shag Chris Hemsworth; appreciated Fred's remark that she was a witching equivalent of Amy Pond, so she understood the _Doctor Who_ reference; and was a fierce Caerphilly Catapults girl; loved Charms; couldn't keep a tulip alive to save her own life; and thought _Radio Rock _was the best thing to happen to the Wizarding world since Slytherin left Hogwarts; she especially loved when any song by the _Spice_ _Girls_ made it on-air. They threw her back to the night her mum had taken her and Maia to London to see the _Spice Girls_ in concert. Maia could still remember the duck-pancakes dinner they'd had in the _Golden Dragon_ in Chinatown, and probably still had the t-shirt Rosie's mum had bought for her.

They made plans to meet up at the festival, if only so Rosie could see Maia's _cosmetics range_—she said she'd always known Maia would go on to do incredible things "winning a Nobel Prize or writing the most amazing novel in history or toppling the government and creating your own civilisation, but I'd _never_ have pegged you for a cosmetics-designer! Just wait till Mum gets a load of that! She was sure you'd end up Prime Minister!"

"We still think that's a possibility," George grinned at Maia. "Maybe Minister for _Magic_, but you'd do much more good in our society than being the Muggle Prime Minister. You're starting a school for werewolf-kids, after all, creating a census for house-elves…"

"About this new civilisation," Fred said to Rosie. "Any suggestions how we'd start repopulating?" Rosie smirked, giving him a saucy, sultry look.

"Hasn't Maia shown you her plan for world-domination?" she asked, glancing from Fred to George, and Maia chuckled, shaking her head.

"What?"

"Year two, our teacher gave us a project; we had to create our own civilisation, with government and culture, bringing in any historical figures we wanted," Rosie grinned. "_Maia_ wanted to get rid of the gingers and sentence pen-thieves to death."

"I was having a bad day," Maia said lightly.

"Aye?"

"You took the last of the apple-pie at lunchtime, and Liam stole my blueberry-scented gel-pen," Maia said, and Rosie laughed.

"You made him cry!" she cackled. "It was _beautiful_. Have you ever seen her get mad?" She glanced at Fred and George.

"I…I don't think I _have_, actually," George said thoughtfully, glancing at Maia.

"Pray you never do; she's scarier than a dragon," Rosie laughed.

"Debatable; our brother works with them out in Romania," Fred said.

"Yeah?" Rosie looked highly interested. "Horror-stories are nothing compared to Maia."

"We did catch a glimpse of it yesterday, when some gits decided to have a go at werewolves," George said thoughtfully, still gazing at Maia.

"Hexed the hell out of them," Fred smiled happily; something had flickered across Rosie's face at the mention of werewolves, but Maia must have imagined it; a second later, Rosie was flirting with Fred again.

"Hey, Maia, how are you coming with that history workbook, anyway?" Fred asked. "You know, the Wizgle one."

"Wizgle?"

"Wizard-Muggle," George grinned at Rosie, who laughed.

"Maia, you're writing a history-book?"

"I'm…working on a workbook, like the ones Diane used to make us for our spelling," Maia smiled sadly.

"Maia's going to educate the Wizarding world on Tolkien, The Borgias and the bicycle," Fred grinned.

"The Borgias!" Rosie gasped, turning a wide-eyed grinned on Maia. "You watch The Borgias?"

"The Showtime one, not the old 'Fifties one," Maia said, grinning, and Rosie swooned.

"Francois Arnaud is the _only_ man alive who can make bishops' robes sexy," Rosie said, sighing lustily.

"And those leather trousers!" Maia said, growling as she clawed the air.

"I _loathe_ Lucrezia, she's turning into a spoiled brat," Rosie wrinkled her nose.

"I haven't watched the new series, I only just finished watching the first series."

"Oh, it's excellent!" Rosie grinned. "Lucrezia is a royal pain, she turns into quite the little bitch, and Juan…"

"I don't like him at all," Maia said, crinkling her nose distastefully. "Arrogant and inept."

"And yet brilliant Cesare always gets accused of being jealous," Rosie said indignantly.

"It's the other way round," Maia nodded. "Juan can't do anything right, and he knows Cesare is the brilliant, brave man in the family." Maia chuckled. "Don't you love Machiavelli?" Maia grinned at the twins, who were shaking their heads. "I've been giving the boys an education in all things Muggle this summer."

"We've been watching _films_, and listening to The Kinks," George grinned proudly. "And reading Maia's slutty novels."

"Ooh, what slutty novels?" Rosie asked, eyes glowing. George grunted, shifting in his seat, and pulled Maia's copy of _Pleasure of a Dark prince_ from his back-pocket. "No way, you read Immortals After Dark?"

"I _worship_ Immortals After Dark," Maia grinned.

"I love their attitude toward werewolves," Rosie chuckled softly, skimming the pages. "But I'd take a demon lover over a vampire any day."

"Only if the demon was Cade," Maia said. "I don't like Rydstrom, Sabine's a complete whore. And the Lykae in general are so overbearing they give me hives—but Garreth's lovely."

"I know; I'd do him," Rosie grinned, laughing easily. Fred glanced from Maia to Rosie to the book in her hand, and snatched it from her, turning to the first page.

"I haven't finished reading that yet!" George complained.

"I'll give it you back when I've finished," Fred said. "While you and Maia go to the British Museum tomorrow I'll read this."

"You're coming with us!" George said.

"Yeah, I'm educating the both of you," Maia said, arching an eyebrow.

"You're going to the British Museum? Why?"

"Because we can't go to the Uffizi in Florence," Maia said, shrugging, and Rosie laughed. "We're going to the British Museum, and I'm looking into tickets for a musical, or a Shakespeare play for my birthday."

"Not _on_ your birthday, of course," George said. "We'll be at the festival."

"Yep."

"What musical d'you want to see?" Rosie asked.

"Well, I saw _The Lord of the Rings Musical_ earlier this summer."

"Shut up!" Rosie laughed.

"It was actually amazing, I didn't think it would be," Maia chuckled. "That same weekend, I saw _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. I really want the twins to see it."

"Well, if you get a fourth ticket, let me know," Rosie grinned. "Mum and Dad spoiled me to three tickets to _Hamlet_ in Stratford-Upon-Avon—"

"When David Tennant was Hamlet?"

"Yep," Rosie smirked.

"Lucky!" Maia gasped.

"Rosie, what's your opinion on Chris Hemsworth?" George asked suddenly.

"_Very_ tasty," Rosie said, flicking her eyebrows up expressively, with a grin.

"We've been trying to convince Maia to take us to the cinema, but she says there's only one film half worth tolerating, but she won't suffer through it because they miscast a Dementor as the lead actress."

Rosie laughed richly, then guessed, "Kristen Stewart in the _Huntsman_ film? …Yeah, I can see the resemblance to a Dementor."

"I just want to see Chris Hemsworth," Fred said lustily, fluttering his eyelashes as he swooned. "He's _so_ dreamy."

"Maybe we can peer-pressure Maia into going to see it," Rosie grinned.

"Yes!" Fred grinned.

"You always could peer-pressure me into doing things," Maia said, smiling at Rosie.

"Oh, right, the Conker Bombardment was _my_ idea."

"Blocking the sinks and toilets with loo-roll so the school flooded was."

"Oh yeah. Well, we had a spelling-test that day."

"I know. And I always loved spelling-tests."

"Yeah, but you were always a weirdo!"

"She still is," George said fondly, grinning.

"Maia?" Fred said, his nose still stuck in the book. "Rugby's a Muggle sport, like football, isn't it?"

"Rugby's a real man's sport," Rosie said decisively. "My mum's really into it."

"How is it you love the Caerphilly Catapults, when both your parents were _obsessed_ with rugby?" Maia chuckled.

"The Catapults have twin Chasers," George said. "Apparently they're rather dishy."

"Their track-record isn't very good, though."

"What, on the field, or with women?" Maia asked, and the twins grinned.

"Probably both; they get hit in the head a lot," George grunted softly, grinning. "It takes its toll."

"You two don't seem to have any problems," Maia observed.

"_We_ don't get hit in the head—"

"—we're the ones doing the hitting!"

"Do you two play Quidditch then?" Rosie asked.

"We're the Gryffindor Beaters," Fred said proudly.

"Do you fly?" Maia asked.

"Yeah, Dad taught me," Rosie shrugged.

"You should see Maia on a broom," George giggled.

"I told you, I am a land-mammal; we're supposed to have our feet firmly on the ground," Maia said, sitting up straighter and pouting indignantly.

"So are werewolves, but Opal's going to be the next Harpies captain," Fred grinned. Rosie's expression changed almost imperceptibly, glancing at Fred.

"Well, so what, I've yet to see you two try and learn how to ride a bike," Maia said challengingly. "Even your dad knows how to ride one."

"Yeah, but Dad's as weird as you," Fred pointed out, and Rosie chuckled.

"I am weird," Maia sighed, yawning.

"Your aunt was weird too, though," Rosie said, smiling brightly. "You didn't really have a chance. Just like I don't have a chance, not with my dad!"

"I always loved your dad," Maia said softly, smiling fondly.

"I still can't believe you're a _witch_," Rosie said, grinning at Maia.

"You too," Maia said, eyebrows raised.

When Rosie made her way home via the Floo Network from the Leaky Cauldron parlour, Maia walked back to Number Twelve with the twins, picking up newspapers and several magazines on the way; she was keeping track of the Olympics. As they wandered, Fred looked jubilant, and couldn't seem to stop grinning.

Maia had started wondering about Hogwarts. Actually going to Hogwarts, taking lessons, _living_ there…unable to leave.

After the festival, they would have almost three weeks until they had to get ready for going to Hogwarts. And then things would change again; she wouldn't have the same freedom she did now to go to _Gladrag's_, the apothecary, the carpenter's, the glassworks… She would have to do _everything_ by owl. And that annoyed her, that loss of freedom. Freedom, and flexibility. She could have done a lot after school and at weekends, if only she could come home after lessons at Hogwarts. Especially since her lessons would be a disjointed schedule at best, taking N.E.W.T. Arithmancy, Astronomy and Ancient Runes with O.W.L. Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration and Charms. She wouldn't have to sit History of Magic because Professor Marchbanks had said Maia could sit the N.E.W.T. exam whenever she chose, having faith that with Diane's tutoring Maia was more than exceeding school standards—especially with the current ghostly professor.

In May, the idea of going to Hogwarts had been essential; she had to learn how to control her magic. But her tutoring at Number Twelve had put her beyond that, she now had a _life_ within the magical community, she loved going out nearly every night, loved readings in the _Talon_ Office, nipping to Diagon Alley for potion ingredients, stationery and snacks, able to go to the cinema, plan trips to the theatre and museums, take the twins to shops in Muggle London, taking classes with the sweet-shop and at Madam Primpernelle's… Now, the thought of going to Hogwarts on the first of September…felt like a prison-sentence. Trapped.

Fred and George had told her what their experience at Hogwarts had been like the last six years; if not for finding the Marauders' Map, they would have been confined to the grounds on weekends, and inside the castle after nine o'clock on evenings, the only place to go outside lessons the library, the Quidditch pitch or the common-room, always full to bursting with bratty first-years and older students despairing over their homework.

The thought of being trapped in a draughty castle in the Scottish highlands seemed…_bleak_.

"Come on, what's up?" George smiled, his arm slung around her shoulders, and Maia sighed, glancing up at him. She confessed to her slight inklings toward despair at the thought of going to Hogwarts, but George just grinned.

"We'll just have to find ways of entertaining ourselves," he said easily. "The others want to continue _The Talon_, and we'll both be inventing."

"_Where_?" Maia said, gazing up at George.

"We'll find somewhere," George shrugged. "And, just think—Fred and I are licensed Apparators. We can sneak out of Hogwarts through the One-Eyed Witch tunnel, Apparate anywhere we wanted." Maia grinned slowly.

"Anywhere," she said softly.

"And, I bet Padfoot would _love_ you to flaunt authority and sneak out of school to visit him," George smiled. His navy eyes darkened thoughtfully. "He'll miss you."

"And I'm going to miss him," Maia said sadly. "What are we going to do when we get to Hogwarts? Even if we keep _The Talon_ going, Cedric won't be able to attend meetings because he's not allowed in the Gryffindor common-room. And we wouldn't have any privacy, or…or _teapots_, or nice armchairs or anything." George chuckled.

"For every need," he said, "there is a misdeed. Come on, poppet, don't fret! Maybe you can revolutionise Hogwarts." Maia scoffed.

"Bring it out of the Dark Ages?" she said gloomily. George chuckled.

"I think we should start a Bowling League," he said thoughtfully, and Maia laughed.

"Really? A bowling league?"

"Yeah! And a secondary Quidditch league—inter-Hogwarts, not inter-House," George mused. "More of us could play, that way, and we could play more matches."

"It would work on inter-House friendship," Maia said. "Ginny says you don't usually associate with kids in other Houses."

"Nope. Unless that _association_ takes place in a darkened corridor or behind a tapestry," George winked, and Maia rolled her eyes, smiling.

"I think that's quite sad, that segregation," she said thoughtfully. "Why isn't there a real _common-room_, where everyone can hang out?"

"Suppose nobody ever thought it necessary," George shrugged. "Hey, did we tell you? I thought of an idea for the first-years."

"You're not instituting hazing, are you?" Maia asked drily.

"No! A Talisman's Hie," George said, grinning. Maia turned to him, eyebrows raised over wide eyes. The Talisman's Hie was a concept from the _Immortals After Dark_ novels, a lethal treasure-hunt between supernatural beings all over the world.

"You want to start a Talisman's Hie? Why not just institute the Hunger Games?" she asked, and George laughed.

"Now that would just be immoral," he said, chuckling. "No, Fred and I thought, why don't we help the younger generation explore the secrets of Hogwarts? It's going to be their home for seven years; they might as well make it _feel_ like home. So, we thought of a sort of treasure-hunt, on the sly, of course, we're going to promote secrecy and mischief, but we'd offer prizes from the shop to the winners. And they'd learn about the castle. Loads of the little ones get lost in their first weeks."

"That's…actually quite brilliant," Maia smiled.

"We thought so," George nodded humbly. "If you're annoyed about the House-segregation, maybe we could split the teams ourselves. Put Slytherins with Gryffindors."

"And have them slit each others' throats?"

"Well, you did suggest a Hogwarts Hunger Games."

The Kinks was playing on the wireless when they entered Number Twelve; and they found Sirius refilling a tea-tray in the kitchen to take up to the den. Maia, ecstatic about having met her best-friend after so long, couldn't wait to tell her uncle about her.

"—I haven't seen her since we were _nine_," Maia said, beaming. "Neither of us had any idea the other was a witch! Apparently her parents blamed _her_, when it was actually _me_ who let loose a herd of pygmy hippos during our class trip to Whipsnade Zoo."

"So, what's she like, this Rosie?" Sirius smiled.

"Fit," Fred remarked with gusto, and Sirius laughed.

"She's _very_ pretty," Maia agreed, smiling. "She's got this deep, dark red hair to her waist, and she's got a Scottish accent now. It really suits her. And she likes rugby and the Caerphilly Catapults, and she watches _The_ _Borgias_."

"Oh, does she lust after Cesare Borgia in his leather trousers too, then?" Sirius smirked.

"Unashamedly," Maia grinned. "Actually, she teamed up with the twins to peer-pressure me into going to watch that _Huntsman_ film."

"Maybe you could review it for _Radio Rock_," Sirius smiled: he had started blending more Muggle culture into his broadcasts—film releases, new CD dates, concerts for different Muggle bands, even book-releases, as well as keeping track of the Olympics, and reading excerpts from particularly good books.

"What, see how anyone could try and justify claiming Kristen Stewart is more beautiful than the total _goddess_ Charlize Theron?" Maia scoffed.

"The actor who plays the Huntsman is prettier than Kristen Stewart," Fred remarked, and Maia laughed.

"So, what are you lot up to this evening?" Sirius asked. "Is there a dance on tonight?"

"No, but there's one tomorrow," Fred said, grinning from ear to ear like the Cheshire Cat.

"He invited Rosie," Maia said, in a pretend undertone to Sirius, who smirked, glancing at Fred.

"Did he, then?" he smirked.

"Yep."

"This Rosie's good-looking, then?" he guessed.

"She's _leggy_. Her hair's almost as dark a red as my Rapunzel—and she's feisty," Maia smiled. Rosie would certainly be up to the task of keeping even Fred Weasley on a leash. She added thoughtfully, "She'd make a good model for my nail-products, actually, she's got lovely hands." Rosie had had long, perfectly manicured nails, slender fingers and elegant hands. "She's a bit like Amy Pond." Rosie truly did have a bit of Amy Pond-ness in her; her feistiness, her incessant flirting, sassing Fred and laughing freely.

Sirius grinned. "No wonder Fred seemed gobsmacked."

"She was always a firecracker when we were little."

"I'm sure that was a mutual trait in your friendship," Sirius smirked. "George says we're to soon see some photographs of your _childhood_."

"And they'll probably be good ones," Maia smiled. "Not as good as your birthday-treat for us all…"

"Well, I wanted to do something special."

"I'm sure you doctored that photo," Maia said, shooting Sirius a look. "Those two boys, I bet they were really you and my dad."

"Nope."

"You won't find many baby-photos of Sirius around here," Remus said, yawning and dropping into the kitchen.

"Why not?"

"Because when I was twelve, my mother got a bit shirty with me," Sirius sniffed. "So I burned most of them."

"You burned your baby-photos?"

"They were the most precious things to her," Sirius shrugged. "They reminded her of the time when she actually loved me."

"I believe it was before you could talk back," Remus said drily, and Sirius pulled a face.

"Probably," he sighed. "So, you three are staying around the house tonight, then?" Maia nodded.

"Yeah, we've all got things to work on," George nodded, and they joined the others in the den. Harry and Ron were playing chess, Neville, reading out of one of his Herbology books, and Cedric was writing a letter, Ginny, playing with Crookshanks, while Hermione frowned at her knitting (Maia had started teaching her).

Remus and Mrs Weasley had approved of Maia's designs for the primary-school uniform, stain-repelling short-sleeved, knee-length hooded robes in forget-me-not silk lined with thermal cotton for warmth, over pinafore-dresses or trousers of warm navy, with warm tights, white short-sleeve shirts, turtle-neck thermal tops or little Peter Pan-collar blouses, and they had gone into production at Madam Malkin's, ready to supply to the children attending Remus' school. Now Maia had to worry about her stall at the festival, which the Order had put all their not-inconsiderable strengths into organising, and filling it with products requested by party-guests at Harry and Neville's birthday.

She and George had had a lot of fun expanding their range of crayons, to scented, special-effects ones, and a collection of colouring-pencils for older children; they had also both been working on colouring-books, and Maia, having remembered sweet little Daisy and Lavinia, who had asked for a fairytale dolly and paper-dolls, was working on paper dolls for her _Snow White_, _Cinderella_, _Rapunzel_, _Little Mermaid_, _Beauty and the Beast_, _Sleeping Beauty_ and _Little Red Riding Hood_ fairytales. She especially loved her dolls for the _Twelve Dancing Princesses_, giving each princess three or four different gowns to switch, and each of the original illustrations inspired the outfits she was sewing for a doll. The doll she had found in the Big House, the one her grandmother had been outfitting, was the type of doll highly-popular at the toy-shop in Diagon Alley, with an exquisite face, rich, shining hair and delicate hands, moveable limbs. The twins, having been working on their Harry Potter doll, had given her access to the wholesale catalogue from the doll-maker, who could supply her with dolls completely unfinished—faceless, hairless, with only the stuffing in the body—or could create the dolls to any physical specification she could dream up; he could also supply accessories, but Maia was sewing the little gowns, in exact likeness to her original illustrations.

On Chummy's urging, Maia had started on prototypes for each of the main fairytale heroines, including one for each of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and was going to put them out at the festival for advance-orders, if people were truly interested in buying them; Chummy had already ordered eight different ones for her nieces, and even Mrs Weasley had been seen smiling adoringly at one of the Twelve Dancing Princesses dolls.

"How come you didn't mention you ran into _Narcissa_ Malfoy?" Sirius asked, sipping a Butterbeer.

"She bought tickets for her son," Maia said, yawning, as she painted away. She was on the last of the Dancing Princesses, which would leave only Cinderella and the Little Mermaid to turn into paper-dolls. "As soon as Andromeda had introduced us all, she paid and left."

"Still a stuck-up cow, then," Sirius grunted. "You alright, Moony?"

"Tired," Remus yawned.

"Someone keeping you up?" George asked innocently; Remus shot him a look, and George laughed.

"Umbridge," Remus said drily.

"That's _disgusting_." Sirius shuddered.

"Have you had any luck?" Maia asked curiously, and Remus gave her a small smile.

"We've decided to make…well, a bit of a _bang_," he smiled.

"Oh, _really_?" Maia grinned.

"We've given a copy of the document to Ailith. Tomorrow morning, she _should_ have the thing published on the front page of the _Prophet_," Remus smiled.

"That's a lot better than just giving it to Fudge and letting him cover it all up," Maia said thoughtfully.

"And Ales has been dying to have a go at Umbridge's legislation for ages," Sirius added. "She'll do the article justice."

"I didn't tell you!" Maia beamed. "I took everything to Gringott's today!"

"How did we do?" Sirius grinned.

"Including the Knight Bus tickets, the communal tent, and the family-passes as well as individual tickets," Maia grinned, "we collected 37,620 Galleons."

Sirius, Remus and George gaped.

"That's…"

"That's a fuck-load of money for throwing some stupid party!" Sirius gaped, and he gave one of his wolfish grins.

"I think that's _more_ than enough to get us started on equipping a schoolroom," Maia smiled. "Books—the free stationery from the printer—furniture, even salaries."

"That's amazing," Remus said, eyes wide.

"You were right, you know; if you make something irresistible, people will buy it, no matter what the funds go towards," George said thoughtfully. "Although, we did have a bit of trouble, didn't we?"

"Trouble?"

"Some bigots shouting their mouths off about werewolves," Maia said, with a dark look.

"Mai soon put them in their places," George smirked, reaching over to pat her leg.

"Someone should've before now," Maia said coolly.

"How are you getting on with your workbook?" Remus asked curiously.

"It's coming along," Maia beamed happily. She was very proud of the progress she was making, putting together her 'Wizgle' history-book. With her cosmetics finished, at least until she could come up with new ones, she had set them aside and focused on her other projects: her knitted animals; her two-way journals; Vanishing Boxes; dolls' clothes; her Wizgle history-book, and George was helping her go through recipes to put into a cookbook. He was still adamant she turn a corner of the _Talon_ Office into a miniature kitchen, so he could photograph everything, and she increasingly adored the idea. It would give them something to do _after_ the festival.

"Will I be able to get one for Dad for Christmas?" George grinned.

Maia chuckled. "Maybe." After she had finished her paintings, she carefully tucked them upstairs, out of harm's way, because Harry and Ron started playing Badminton across the den, Neville was tending to the ugliest little cactus-type plant his Great Uncle Algie had brought him back from Assyria, and Crookshanks upset Cedric's ink-bottle, streaking ink across the carpet. She curled up in George's lap, dozing while he and the others watched a film, until Kreacher called them down to dinner. Mrs Weasley handed them several orders that had arrived via owl-post earlier in the day, and Fred remarked blackly that Phlegm had bought four tickets to the festival—she was bringing her younger sister and two French cousins.

Bill warned him that they were to show Phlegm every kindness despite their personal opinions—"just because we're not going out—"

"_HANG ON_."

Everyone turned to stare at Bill; someone's cutlery clanged as it collided with the floor. Ginny gasped, and Maia stared at Bill, who had gone a little pink.

"You…" Fred gaped.

"You dumped Fleur?" George said softly, sounding as if he barely dared believe his ears.

Bill sighed, running a hand over his face. "We decided that we are too different. And we want different things…" The Weasley siblings each glanced at each other, each seeming to dare the other to make the first move toward celebrating this piece of information.

The twins burst up from their seats and started doing a sort of war-dance around the dining-table, with an accompanying song with several colourful rhyming couplets, with a chorus that went along the lines of "_Free from Phlegm_!" Ginny joined in.

"—are you sure, dear?" Mrs Weasley asked, looking concernedly at Bill. "You did seem really to like her a lot."

"—_free from Phlegm!_"

"It's alright, Mum," Bill smiled, arching an eyebrow as Ginny darted a kiss on his cheek on her way whirling past. Harry was laughing at her; Hermione gave the twins a disapproving from, though she couldn't seem to stop a small smirk lighting up her eyes.

"—_free from Phlegm_!"

"That's enough, Fred, George, Ginny!" Mrs Weasley called, adding to Bill, "I hope the family isn't to blame." Sipping his wine, Bill smiled lazily and set his glass down on the pressed tablecloth.

"The family is _entirely_ to blame," he smiled, as Fred and George whirled and danced past, jubilant.

"I'm so sorry, dear," Mrs Weasley said sorrowfully.

"_Free_—!"

"Will you three sit down and finish your dinner!" Mrs Weasley said curtly, frowning. "Tell me what happened, Bill."

"Don't worry about it, Mum," Bill smiled. "We'd only just met. Age-difference, temperament, my career, her ambitions…the fact she only wanted one child, in no fewer than ten years in the future…"

"One kid?"

"Just _standing_ next to a Weasley, I'm surprised she isn't carrying triplets already," Maia smiled, and Bill chuckled.

"We do have a talent for procreating," he said, pulling a face at the twins. "Though I'm not sure the finished products are, er, always quite worth the effort…"

"_Oi_!"

"You'd be thirty-six if you waited ten years to have your first kid," Ginny remarked thoughtfully, pausing for a second in her war-dance with the twins.

"_There is nothing wrong with being thirty-six_!" Sirius blurted indignantly, looking slightly shell-shocked, and Maia smirked, patting his hand.

"Or with waiting that long to have a baby," Hermione said. "My mother was thirty-four when I was born."

"I can't see you having only one child, Bill… Next-in-line patriarch of the family, you should have a whole _host_ of children."

"Yeah, you don't want your kid to grow up like Harry or Maia," Fred added, and Maia glanced at him, eyebrows raised. "I'm just saying, Weasleys don't respond well to isolation… You remember the _naughty_-_step_?"

"Five minutes on the fourth stair from the kitchen was _hardly_ isolation, dear," Mrs Weasley sighed.

"To a five-year-old? You separated me from Georgie," Fred said.

"The naughty-step. It explains everything," Maia said, patting Fred's hand gently. Mrs Weasley chuckled indulgently, watching George and Ginny, who were still dancing their victory/war-dance.

"_Gone—gone—Weasleys are_ free!" George cooed delightedly.

"Alright! You two! Sit down, finish your dinner!" Mrs Weasley ordered.

"This is such _wonderful_ news!" Ginny declared, beaming, and hugged Bill, looking jubilant, before reclaiming her place at the table. George leaned down to kiss Bill's cheeks, giving Maia a flash on the Doctor kissing Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All, before he too retook his seat at the table.

Fred burst into tears, wailing, "I'mjust_ so HAPPY_!" He popped a kiss right on Bill's lips before fighting Remus for the last of the roast-beef.

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><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review! I know I'm awful for waiting months to update, but I've had things to do! Now that university's done and I'm officially employed by the John Lewis-Waitrose partnership, I will have time to…well, schedule time to write!


	41. Chapter 41

**A.N.**: I know, I know, it's been ages since I updated. So I decided to shock you and update a new chapter! It's been a long time coming, but I'd got the point in the story where I knew where I'd wanted to be, but didn't know how to get there. So, I know this is a short one, there's not much dialogue, but it's the details I enjoyed writing.

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><p><strong>Eldest of the Pleiades<strong>

_41_

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><p>New bits and pieces were added to the line-up of the festival as the idea evolved and the awareness of the event spread through the 'artistic' circles within the Wizard community of England – the struggling musicians; the artists; comedians; hot new fashion-designers and milliners who wanted to make names for themselves but couldn't afford rental in the Crescent, and couldn't displace such time-honoured institutions as Madame Malkin's and Gladrag's in Diagon Alley.<p>

Maia, Ailith and Chummy were kept busy in the immediate run-up to the festival by an idea first run past Ailith, who had the contacts, friends of Tonks: the hot new designers wanted to put on a guerrilla fashion-show. With the thousands expected to show up, they had never had greater opportunity short of taking over the Atrium in the Ministry of Magic to show their designs to such an enormous audience.

A stage was set up with a runway, backstage was tented off with illuminated mirrors, and free passes were handed out to the models the designers were using. To make the fashion-show part of the event a draw, the designers worked with Maia and various cafés in Diagon Alley to come up with finger-foods the models could pass around during the shows, designed to fit with the theme of each collection: specific bands were going to play, ushering the models on with specific songs, and the twins were asked to work on the backdrops and special-effects lighting for each show – some were simple, wanting delicate sheets of champagne fireworks glittering softly in the background, some, like the collection inspired by the _Hunger Games'_ Capitol, mixed with Alexander McQueen, Cinna and Marie-Antoinette excessive opulence, wanted full-on awe-inspiring lighting.

All of the girls – including Rosie, who had come by to help them all set up the festival in the past few days, despite not being allowed to come to Number Twelve – were treated to the dress-rehearsal of the fashion-show, smoothing out the kinks of garment line-ups, the segues between designers' collections, changing the set and lighting. Maia got into a long conversation about _Hunger Games_ fashion and she chatted for an hour just about Matt Smith's bowties in _Doctor Who_ with the amazing milliner who had made Maia almost weep at the beautiful hats, fascinators and ornaments she had designed, with gloves – leather, lace, fingerless laser-cut suede – and purses to _die_ for.

Continuing with the theme of all of them working together to raise money for something worthwhile, all of them trying to _promote_ each other, given this was the first opportunity many of the acts had ever had to do so in front of such a huge audience, the fashion-designers were going to use _Maia's_ cosmetics and nail-products to beautify their models for the shows, in various different looks.

There were ten different designers, all of them collaborating with Maia for cosmetics, hair-products and manicures, collaborating with each other for accessories, high heels, hats, and in talks with different musicians, singers and acts to make their part of the show unique, handing out free canapés and mini treats fitting the theme of their collections to the audience to make it memorable. Colourful, folding deck-chairs were arranged around the runway; Fred and George were excited to put their explosive talents to good use, loitering around backstage as the models changed in and out of various outfits – Maia dragged them away by their ears, just before one of the models could curse them – and another number of people wanted to get involved with the fashion-show part of the festival, given there was opportunity to promote their businesses by offering catering, putting together the sets based on the designers' wishes, accessorising with handmade jewellery.

It was interesting for Maia, who had grown up reading Vogue magazine, knew the designers of the Muggle world and their influence on fashion, cosmetics and silhouettes, to watch the dress-rehearsal, seeing the influences the designers had taken from the Muggle world, mingling them with wizard cultural elements – self-altering garments, for example – one designer had an obsession with the 1950s: her models all had long natural hair, btu the front locks had been dyed beautiful bright colours, and swept up into victory-rolls. They wore vintage letterman sweaters, patterned silk hotpants, structured crop-tops with very pretty, unique details, T-bar stilettos and vintage purses – they were all beautiful, punky girls covered in glorious tattoos, and half the outfits were translucent covers tauntingly concealing fun, vintage lingerie in gorgeous patterns, luxurious fabrics and unique styles. The use of a pinball machine and mini ice-creams being handed out compounded the nostalgic, retro feel of the collection.

The next showed how the recent mania over Baz Lurhman's _Great Gatsby_ had infiltrated some knowledgeable circles of the wizarding community: severe black pixie-cuts with finger-curls hinted at the Deco fabulousness, while the sharp pant-suits, pointed stilettos and simple shift dresses in bright colours echoed Art Deco geometric architecture; sparkling emerald manicures, beautiful red lips and dewy complexions completed the beauty look, while gorgeous handmade leather purses, cropped laser-cut suede gloves and cloche hats – some of velvet, some of wool and a few stunning ones of translucent straw for summer – completed the look. The sharp, minimalist shift dresses and suits starting off the collection segued to the most immaculate, staggering evening-dresses full of embellishments and Art Deco, Egyptian influences, stunning silhouettes heavy with beading, swaying fringe, pearls, absolutely stunning. A custom cocktail shot had been created for this woman's show, and a jazz band performed during it.

Bold eyebrows, with light bronzer and a natural blush, and messy, tousled asymmetric bobs and Mohawk braids, ushered in a playful, relaxed collection defined by understated statement jewellery (geometric Deco cuffs), neon kitty eye-liner, bikinis printed with Marilyn Minter-esque artwork, with diaphanous, laidback and beautiful beach-to-cocktail-bar outfits, with vibrant fuchsia-red manicures. Maia _loved_ the Mohawk braid! The designer, who had an American husband, insisted on dishes of flavoursome 'barbecue' shrimp being passed around during her show, and in the sunshine, it made an amazing atmosphere.

The next designer wanted crab and shrimp gyoza dumplings: they had focused their beauty look around the stunning freckles each of her models had – natural lip-stain, smudged kohl lining the lower-lashes, the models had sun-drenched high-ponytails full of tousled volume, with silver/nude manicures; they each wore completely customised leather jackets, with blouses printed with the edgiest floral patterns found in nature, Asian influences in the cut and design of dresses; they wore leggings, black pumps, wrap-skirts made of jersey and hi-low ones of chiffon, and it was one of Maia's favourite collections.

One Muggle-born designer showed the deepest connection to her roots, showing off cropped logo-tees with funky references only Maia and Rosie understood right away, worn over translucent, sequined undervests, with patterned silk trousers, or high-waisted dark denim shorts, unique Doc Marten-style boots in jewel-toned velvets; this designer used Maia's nail-wraps to give her models fun manicures, and with their smudged eyeliner, natural lipstick and deep side-parts, their hair textured and natural-looking, Maia could have seen these models as part of the It crowd amongst Muggle models and Indie musicians, and little glasses of beer were to be handed out with empanadas.

There were other designers, edgy but deeply classical in style, quirky and fun but polished, who showed off their stunning cocktail-dresses, dress-robes, daywear, swimwear, lingerie and millinery skills, and while they organised their shows, the twins kept working on the lighting and sets, collaborating with the musicians so everything was timed beautifully.

New acts had been added to the line-up since the tickets were sold – a beautiful but terrifying woman whose face _never_ _moved_ was a former-dancer and owned a burlesque club; but they were struggling, and needed further exposure: her corps of dancers and singers were going to have their own after-dark slot to perform, in a specially-designed lounge with revolving mirrors, unique cocktails, superior lighting and little round tables, smoky and luxurious, decadent and forbidden. Opal had been scared by the owner and manager of the burlesque club, but the dancers all looked – well, beautiful and toned, but _normal_ – until they got into their gear and makeup to do a dress-rehearsal on the stage they would share with several bands during the evening.

Fred had to be forcibly removed by his mother after pestering the girls so much they were in danger of wetting themselves in their leather bondage lingerie (for a routine to Etta James' _Tough Lover_) and sparkling corsets, dramatic eye-makeup and voluminous hair, fishnets, thongs and heels for an original song their manager had written to showcase her newest dancer's staggering voice. Sirius asked the singer if she wanted to do a live performance on _Radio Rock_, the same offer he had been making to numerous bands and performers, to start planning future shows and build up a repertoire of acts willing to perform on his show.

A nineteen-year-old graduate of Hogwarts who had spent time after school working in Muggle nightclubs, got into an excited conversation with Sirius about having a slot on _Radio Rock_ for his music – he was a DJ who mingled wizard pop with Muggle hip/hop, rock and jazz, his best-friend a fourteen-year-old named Polly, ironically, whom Rosie had been friends with for years. Polly was nicknamed 'Shado', on account of never wanting to be in the spotlight, but she was this exquisite white-blonde beauty, slim and dainty with her own quirky sense of style, developing ever more after Rosie brought her to the trial-run of the fashion-show, and gushing as any fourteen-year-old would over free cosmetics offered her by Maia to help promote _Pleiades Inc._ during the festival. According to Rosie, 'Shado' had the voice of Adele, could rap better than a ghetto-bound black guy living on food-stamps and was obsessed with big-band, Christina Aguilera's _Back to Basics_ album and the old-timey, Glenn Miller, fun and sexy feel to the music. Shado was going to perform during her best-friend Antony's set – whether she knew this yet, or not! He'd confessed to Sirius, who had organised a lot of the new acts personally, now no longer recognisable from his Wanted posters, that Shado was deeply shy and the only way to get her to perform was to throw her in at the deep-end without any notice whatsoever.

Maia had been on a break from setting up the _Pleiades Inc./Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ tent, when the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ had practiced a last-minute collaboration with Antony, who had mixed some of their songs before, creating a new, fresh sound; he had dragged Shado over, knowing she had written a duet over of one of the guys' songs – and during the festival, history was made, when Antony fireman-lifted Shado onstage with the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ to perform – the entire crowd had screamed with shock and amazement as pretty, quirky Shado debuted out of nowhere in a revamped duet cover of one of the _Frabjous Chizpurfles'_ songs, stunning the audience with the incredible range of her voice, her talent as a rapper, and Sirius had the entire song recorded on one of his wireless orbs, and it would become one of the highest-requested songs on _Radio Rock_ for the next three months.

Nothing like the festival had ever been organised before; and Maia hoped it would occur again, and again. There had never been this much exposure for the 'underground' of Wizarding culture – the nonconformist, the creative, expressive, manic young witches and wizards who had grown up in the wake of the War, didn't remember the shadow of that terror like their parents, and wanted to break through the traditionalist, conservative lifestyle their parents had lived.

If _Radio Caroline_ and the 1960s had given the Muggle world the kick it needed to move forward, the first glimpse into a world of pop-culture, then the festival, and _Radio Rock_ was the first milestone proving that the cultural underground was ready to take over. It just needed an opportunity: and the festival was that unexpected break.

And Sirius had organised something _very _special to surprise the crowds with. He wouldn't even tell Maia, or Remus. But he was _giddy_, and Maia hoped he hadn't invented a TARDIS to go back in time and scoop up James and Lily.

Because if he could, Maia knew Sirius _would_.

The festival went off without a hitch. At least, to Maia's eyes, and she knew the adults were shouldering more of the organisational burden, but they had countless volunteers, and she never saw anyone unhappy: it was manic, but it was a fabulous weekend, bright and not a cloud in the sky. They had all gotten ready at Number Twelve Friday-night, transporting everything to the Hobbit-hole that night, and they had slept in tents overnight, so there wasn't a rush to get to the venue before everyone started showing up. While they had done sound-checks the day before, making sure each act ran smoothly into the next, the vendors, musicians and performers had to arrive early, to get settled and make any last-minute adjustments they needed to; Ailith arrived with a flurry of reporters from different magazines, all with special passes to interview the acts, festival-goers and organisers, and a huge breakfast was supplied by Mrs Weasley and Kreacher to everyone already gathered. It made the huge gathering of people seem far more intimate, everyone chatting with each other, strangers who had never met laughing and introducing themselves, selling each other's products and advertising different things, suggesting collaborations.

In the spirit of things, Maia had suggested everyone in their acquaintance – people like Seamus and Dean, Cedric's girlfriend Cho, Chummy's older nieces and nephews, people in the Order – could carry a camera around, and in the days after the festival, put a piece together for _The Talon_. She and George had thought of doing just a special issue dedicated to the festival, that they could leave copies of along the Hogwarts Express in a couple of weeks when they headed off to school. Sure-fire way to expand the viewership of _The Talon_, and promote _Radio Rock_, the various artists, musicians, designers and other acts performing or showing off their wares at the festival, to people who might not have had the opportunity to go. It was the closest they could get to live-broadcasting like the Muggle Olympics, but Maia thought it could work.

Despite the fact the festival wasn't even over yet, Maia and George had been talking about what came next – for Pleiades Inc. and Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. The idea of pop-up shops intrigued George, and Maia thought, if they were handing out copies of _The Talon_, they may as well go the whole-hog and set up _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ and _Pleiades_ _Inc._ stalls on the Hogwarts Express, the better to make their presence known before they were all separated by House common-rooms, no real interaction with their peers to advertise and sell their products. But give kids a taste on the train, promising more goodies, even better tricks and prettier cosmetics, and they would surely come back, seek out the twins, and Maia, for more information, even during term-time. When they were limited to termly visits down to Hogsmeade to satisfy their cravings for Honeyduke's, Zonko's and Madam Rosmerta's butterbeer, if kids could get things from Maia and the twins…well, Prohibition had proven people were willing to pay even under the threat of breaking the rules, to obtain what they couldn't get elsewhere.

First, though, they'd have to work _hard_ to replenish their back-stock. Within three hours of opening their tent to festival-goers, Maia was completely wiped out of Saturday's stock, and the twins were jam-packed until the moment Fred literally had to let off the last explosive to get some quiet and tell people the shop was closing for the day, as they were out of stock, and to come back in the morning.

It was a stunning weekend. Not a cloud in the sky, the sound of live music, laughter and the twins' explosives, demonstrations of their products going on everywhere Maia looked as she dawdled around with Hermione, taking a break from manning the S.P.E.W. stall, Rosie and Shado; and everywhere she looked, girls were getting into the festival spirit trying out the bits and pieces they had bought from her. She had kept the Pleiades Inc. tent open for an hour after she ran out of her Saturday stock, only so her volunteers could give girls makeovers using her products, and even now, some of the volunteers were wandering around with trays of Maia's products draped around their necks, giving girls a touch-up with lipstick and applying glittering, colourful streaks of hair-dye, carrying owl-order forms to hand out. The musicians were amazing, whipping the crowds into frenzies, but the atmosphere was laidback, _fun_, everyone was enjoying picnics and meals from the food-zone, where Mrs Weasley reigned supreme, doling out fish-and-chips, muscles, where Louisiana jambalaya and custom French crêpes were being served beside gourmet hot-dogs; Florean was run off his feet, laughing and smiling with customers, as he doled out ice-creams – he handed Maia a cone of dark-chocolate gelato, when she popped over to see how he was doing – Mal was under fire at his Pavilion, which was broadcasting Sirius, who was broadcasting different acts live; he had never had a more successful day of selling! It helped that he was promoting the albums of the musicians, bands and singers who were performing live for the festival-goers. And people were tipsy from Madam Rosmerta's pop-up bar, thus more willing to part with their gold.

And it wasn't just young-professionals and teenagers; _families_ were having a blast! If there was trouble, it was quickly dealt with before the atmosphere could sour: those in charge of security kept things from reaching any point where they threatened the success of the day, and they had orders to _remove_ any offenders, not confront them. But Maia didn't see or hear of any trouble, and the entire weekend went smoothly – it was an aweing venture they had decided to pull off, and anyone who realised Maia, Hermione and the others had been involved in putting it together went out of their way to tell them what an inspiring and fabulous weekend it had turned out to be. The music, the food, the kids' zone and activities, the Triwizard maze, the flying lessons with famous Quidditch players – the whispers that Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory were around in the crowds somewhere (they were carrying donation buckets, along with Opal, who had a habit of shoving the bucket in someone's face, giving them a dazzling grin, and demanding they give her their money) excited people, and Sirius perhaps enjoyed himself the most out of everyone in attendance, either performing or enjoying the acts: he bounded around in his leather trousers, patterned dark silk shirt and sunglasses, broadcasting different acts live on _Radio Rock_ so those not in attendance could enjoy the music, if not the fun – the twins started a water-war in the amazing kids' playground – grinning from ear to ear, chatting with different festival-goers, all of whom tried taking a guess at his real identity. None came close – and he looked so _vastly_ different from the Sirius Black on all of the Wanted posters that only those who may have known him as a young man might have had an inkling.

After their hectic few hours selling every single item in their tents, Maia met back up with the twins, who were soaking wet and grinning, with dangerous hints of being on the brink of sun-burn, to have something to eat, in a big group consisting Harry, Ginny, Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, Tonks, the Frabjous Chizpurfles, Rosie, Shado and Opal, who grunted, dragging a very heavy bucket after her on the grass.

"_I_ got even more than Cedric," she exclaimed gleefully; she had been latched onto his hand as he toured the meadows, talking to people about winning (dually, with Harry) the Triwizard Tournament, and the harrowing Tasks he had had to complete first, and what Cedric was planning to do now, after finishing Hogwarts next June. "Even though _all_ the girls wanted kisses and pictures with him. Harry, did _you_ get kisses?" She shot Harry a look, as if being kissed by girls was absurd.

"No," Harry smiled.

"How many moneys have I got here, Maia?" Opal asked, shoving the bucket toward Maia; the contents went sparkling and shining all over the grass when it upturned, and Opal let out a colourful exclamation she must have thought was a swear-word, as she clapped her hand to her mouth, eyes widening, as they all laughed. Maia helped scoop the money back into the bucket – a love of silver, a bit of bronze, and a few glimmers of gold Galleons in each handful – and told her they'd count it up at the end of tomorrow.

After they had wiled away an hour during a lazy picnic lunch, watching a glorious female-led act, the one Maia had only heard on vinyl at the Weeping Sunflower the first night she had gone out with Ailith and Tonks, when she had first met the Frabjous Chizpurfles – the act was the one that sounded very like Lana Del Rey and _Florence + The Machine_, with chinking harps, an amazing saxophonist, with soft bagpipes and beautiful violins, upbeat and wistful, with powerful vocals from the vibrantly scarlet-headed singer. The others went off to various attractions – being organisers, they were allowed to enjoy them all for free, which owed to Opal's annual change of face-paint – and before they had decided to meet up by the dance-floor where Antony was doing an hour-long DJ set, Maia and the twins went back to their tent.

Kreacher had been an enormous help in repairing a raw-silk marquee-tent found in the attic: for the purpose of the twins' and Maia's shops, one half of the silk had been changed to an acid forget-me-not blue colour; the other was left a pale, shimmering champagne gold, but the inside of the tent had been left completely open to their imagination. A polished counter served as a partition down the centre of the tent, featuring two tills – one would definitely _not_ have been enough, the number of people they had served within three hours – and a few of the most expensive and temperamental products were kept out-of-reach above it, with Maia's pocket-wirelesses on display, tuned to _Radio Rock_.

Or they had been. They were completely wiped out, even though the twins had had to expand a level upwards, with a twin spiral-staircase (one side moving upwards, the other, down, automatically) to the mezzanine: the volunteers who had come to help out had been rushed off their feet, giving demonstrations, doing makeovers, explaining products, gently refusing to haggle and give discounts, putting together gifts for girls and boys alike – they'd had trouble keeping people from carrying products from one shop into the other, and in the end the twins and Maia had decided to just sell it all, and comb through invoices at a later date.

"I feel…violated," George mused, staring around the devastation that was every empty shelf, displays off-kilter, and Maia winced. Their hard work had paid off in spades, but now…they had to straighten up, and restock every shelf from scratch.

"I'm glad at least we didn't put aside _all_ our stocks for this," she said honestly, glancing at the twins. Selling out entirely, as wonderful as that would have been, would have meant starting _entirely_ from scratch with everything. They had set aside stock for owl-order and for the run-up to Christmas: as brand-new businesses, run by only the three of them, they couldn't handle having to start afresh. She added, after reflection, "Although, this should give _you_ a glimpse what your average day would be like during the summer-holidays." She eyed the twins, their excitement, the flush to their faces (more proof they'd had too much sun; George broke out the _Redneck-No-More_ and healed their burns, without excess freckles) the grins tugging at the corners of their mouths, and she knew…it wouldn't matter to them. They had been in their element, the centre of attention, in the middle of a riot of noise and hyperactivity. They were made for days like this, thrived on the chaos. Their shop would change the world they knew.

Maia had specific acts she wanted to see, so it was aided by Tink and Dashy that the twins and Maia set their displays to rights, restocking the shelves, and Dashy set up some security so they could leave the tent unattended, watching the acts they wanted to – they witnessed history being made, Shado being fireman-lifted onstage with the _Frabjous Chizpurfles _by Antony just as the sun started to set, the segue between daytime entertainment and the first of the edgier, more adult, at least teenaged, acts that would dominate the night-time. Except for a two a.m. slot, every stage was booked round the clock for the entire weekend, preferred time-slots won by lottery or donation, and after the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_, Sirius took the stage, applauding Shado and the band and Antony, pumping everyone up with raucous jokes and he introduced…the _twins_. They had a comedy-hour slot booked on the stage.

And to say they were a hit was as much an understatement as saying _Lord of the Rings_ was a spat over a bit of jewellery. They were an _enormous_ hit, and Sirius broadcasted their entire set (mostly because he was laughing too hard to breathe, let alone talk) to the nation. They had bene in talks, Maia knew, for the twins to have their own hour-long segment every week, even after they left for Hogwarts – they had been looking into another set of broadcasting microphones that the twins could take with them.

After the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ and a few other acts Maia and the twins wanted to watch, they met Rosie and Shado outside of the burlesque lounge, and were awed by the headlining act's voice and cover of Etta James' _Tough Lover_ and the veteran dancer's cover of _You Haven't Seen the Last Of Me_ and their original song, _Show Me How You Burlesque_ as the finale, all of the lithe, talented dancers in glittering gold mini-dresses and precariously high heels and sparkling champagne fishnets and eye-catching costume jewels; Shado and the main act, a soft-spoken, sweet young-woman named Alice, got into a conversation about working together on an album – Shado got upset; she was starting Hogwarts this year alongside Rosie and Maia, and wouldn't be free to visit Alice in London to work together on music and songs. Maia suggested they could work something out, she was sure Alice wouldn't mind waiting until the Christmas holidays if they could write to each other with lyrics and music, and they could always be the first to try out the Muggle way of recording different parts in different places, laying the tracks together when both parts were tweaked and polished, the way Agnetha Fältskog and Gary Barlow had put together _I Should've Followed You Home_ in two different countries. She was sure Anthony was capable of putting the tracks together, if they could figure out how to record both girls' voices.

They got into a discussion about Polly – Shado – starting Hogwarts this year; at her parents' insistence, now that she had the opportunity, but Shado wanted to be a performer. She wanted to sing – to get over her shyness and bound onstage like the twins and have people mesmerised.

Maia assured her that was absolutely the case already, shy or not. _The Fugitive_ was going to be playing her duet and collab with _Frabjous Chizpurfles _and Antony for weeks – with Alice singing _Something's Got a Hold On Me_.

The only glitch on Saturday came after the twin's comedy-hour, when the singer who was supposed to go onstage was found passed out drunk: this turned out to be fortuitous, as the _Frabjous Chizpurfles_ brought onstage one of their female friends with a voice more powerful than Pavarotti, and she brought her jazz-band friends onstage; Alice came over from the burlesque lounge and Shado was shoved onstage by Rosie, and they had an impromptu jam session covering some legendary Muggle classics, Fred joining in on the spoons. Bands that had previously performed on other stages started filtering over, joining them on the main-stage, letting the other singers have a rest and a drink while they took turns, and Maia found herself laughing uncontrollably, not helpful when dancing a traditional Irish jig with Sirius and George, who had dragged Augusta Longbottom over. In fact, most of the Order and their other acquaintances had gathered in front of the main stage by midnight, first to watch Jack and the boys, then sit rolling in their seats, clutching their stomachs, crying with laughter as they listened to the twins' comedy hour, and now, they applauded, and danced.

As the midnight hour approached, sweaty and incandescently _happy_, warm but enjoying the light breeze on her bare legs, her snakeskin-print silk rah-rah skirt fluttering at her upper-thighs, her threadbare mauve cotton t-shirt with caricatures of all the girls at Number Twelve painted on it with fabric paint sticking to her skin, dried now after the water-fight the twins had started, her hair voluminous where it was loose, curling, the front locks, dyed fuchsia and sparkling, twisted up into victory-rolls, her smudged eyeliner and colourful coral-red lipstick giving a punch of colour, her face dusted with iridescence left over from the special-effects hair-mists she had been developing and demonstrated earlier, she had been given a simply _stunning_ fascinator by one of the fashion-designers and she was wearing her hand-me-down dragon-hide boots, arms packed with bracelets, a lariat necklace glittering down her front, her eyes a mask of shimmering face-paint in the style of a phoenix. She was dancing with George; she was breathless and _happy_, mesmerised by the day, exhausted but restless, hyperactive on too many ice-creams from Florean, tipsy and energised by Madam Rosmerta's beer and the heat of the afternoon, ears ringing from the live music, her stomach still hurting from laughing so hard at Fred and George, she was dancing with her _uncle_…as far as birthday-parties went, this first she had ever had was Maia's _best_ _ever_.

She didn't need presents, cards – she enjoyed an amazing time with the new friends she had made… Her _family_. They were her family – and as their watches ticked to five minutes to midnight, Sirius grinned, giving her a huge kiss on the cheek (he was slightly toasted) and dragged her, in a headlock, onstage.

"Now… I'm tipsy, and want to get back to flirting _shamelessly_ with Ailith – _so_ – what we're going to do," Sirius said, his voice magnified across the audience, "is say an enormous 'thank you' to Maia here, for coming up with this _fabulous_ idea. A huge round of applause to the woman behind the festival; none of this would be here if it weren't for you, poppet. And – " he called over the applause and screaming cheers – "an enormous _Happy Birthday_, because in…three…two…one… She is _sixteen years old_!" Smiling embarrassedly, Maia sort of tucked herself beside George, trying to get out of direct line of sight of _everyone_ screaming happy birthday – a chorus of the birthday song started echoing through the meadows, and she blushed hotly, as George draped an arm around her shoulders, chuckling. He was an enormous, hot presence beside her, hadn't stopped grinning throughout the entire day, had taken her hand a few times as they'd wandered around, Maia awed by the Abraxan foals giving rides to little children, allowing her time in the Arts & Crafts tent, getting her face-painted, they had watched the entire guerrilla fashion-show together, and he'd gotten into a conversation with a few of the designers about a collaboration. She'd liked staying close to him all day, had found this deep _calm_ whenever she caught his eye even during the hellacious rush when their shops had been open to the public, and she hadn't had time even to breathe, overwhelmed by her immediate and unexpected success. She had _Witch Weekly_ to thank for that – and her own hard work, Sirius' broadcasts on _Radio Rock_ and the twins slipping her first owl-order form into their own owl-order catalogue.

Embarrassed, they let her tumble off the stage after a huge round of applause, to accept a mini croquembouche from Kreacher, complete with a sparkler, and get a few hours' sleep while the party went on around her: the twins wouldn't let her go to bed, though, until they and Sirius had given her the gift they had been working on since the twins had come to stay with them at Number Twelve.

It was Sirius' idea. The twins had put a _lot_ of effort into helping him execute it, proving their potential beyond joke-products and fireworks.

It was something old and new at once, borrowed, and blue. Something bigger on the inside.

They had built her…_a TARDIS_.

* * *

><p><span><strong>A.N.<strong>: Please review!


	42. Note to Readers

31 January 2015

Hello, hello! Yes, I know, not an update like you were anticipating – but I have news.

If you're a fan you know me well enough by now to realise I like to rewrite my stories, especially if I haven't worked on them for a while and my ideas have evolved.

This is true for _Eldest of the Pleiades_. I've had to take a break from writing, after starting a new job (yay! It's a 9-5:30 and we have casual-dress Fridays! I've changed my nail-polish about twenty times in the last four weeks! The only drawback is the cost of petrol!) so I had to take a step away from Maia, Giulia and Sophia, my favourite girls.

I've changed quite a bit of _Pleiades_, I'm extending the story, so that it spans at least two years, so some things have been taken out or will occur in a different order; I also wanted to alter Maia's personality a bit, some of the things she gets up to and produces in my original story don't really match up to her personality, so I've worked on that, made her more actively mischievous, creative and a bit erratic, though injustice will bring out the steely side to her – and she has the traditional Black temper. She's also a bit more reckless, and she's cleverer than Hermione because she's more creative, thinks outside the box, but she thinks her abilities as a witch seem more advanced to others mostly because of her alternative schooling, she hasn't been restricted to a 'standard' curriculum.

Where was I? Oh, I've had to think about the plot and characters, I'm going to hone the number of characters I introduce because they just take up a lot of my time writing them, especially when they serve no further purpose in the story!

I had a thought the other day, when I was sucked into the Pinterest vortex and came across a picture of two redhaired twin girls wearing identical knitted jumpers, and I thought, 'Hm, they'd look exactly how twin-daughters of Fred might. They'd probably have been a _lot_ of trouble and it would've served Fred right!'

And I'm watching _Prisoner of Azkaban_ and wondering, You know in _Order of the Phoenix_ when the twins let of their portable swamp? Flitwick keeps a little patch roped off because it was a 'really good bit of magic', and I wondered, did this last through Snape's term as Headmaster? And did Flitwick add a plaque, 'The Portable Swamp, Created by Notorious Troublemakers In Chief, twins Fred & George Weasley, Owners of _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_. _In Memoriam_ Fred Weasley 1 April – 2 May, _WSH_. Wreak Some Havoc.'

But that's too depressing – I like the idea of Fred having twin daughters who are worse than he and George were!

I really should stick to the point – I'll be _DISCONTINUING_ THIS VERSION of _Eldest of the Pleiades_.

What I'd like to hear from you is whether you want me to delete the chapters of this version, and update the new ones so you can still find the story easily.

Or do you want me to create a new version entirely?

Maybe you could compare the two? I wanted to make things a little more real – Maia's depression and her struggles to contain her magic when she's very upset or angry, dealing with the death of her aunt; the grim nature of Number 12; Maia's TARDIS and her workshop full of things she has invented, as well as stories about her playing tricks and sending jinxed cakes to people. And I'll be introducing a few new characters who'll have a lot of influence on Sirius, Remus, Maia, and I'm planning things for the Death Eaters, and Draco. Mostly I wanted Maia to be an amused observer of Narcissa appearing on Andromeda and Ted's doorstep after Lucius is arrested by Madam Bones, all contrite and not sure what to do with herself, realising her prejudices aren't worth her husband's freedom and her son's happiness.

And, best of all, Maia and George will get together a sooner – though their relationship will be fraught with boyish cluelessness, Maia's depression, Umbridge's interference at Hogwarts which leads to a mass underground-movemet spurred by Maia and Neville to embrace Muggle culture and werewolf rights, elf freedom and how to fortify a castle using Home Alone-type tactics, Mrs Weasley's disapproval, hospital visits and planning to open shops. Plus, Fred. 'Cause let's be honest, people, Fred and George are each other's soul-mates. Anything else is unthinkable.

So, update the existing profile of _Eldest of the Pleiades_ or start a new story entirely?

I'm thinking of just deleting the old chapters, but I know people have enjoyed the old ones.

Let me know!

Thanks,

_Mellowenglishgal_


	43. Final Note

31 January 2015

Hi Everyone,

So, after several replies to my last update, I've decided to upload the new version of _Eldest of the Pleiades_ to the site. The old version has had 'OLD VERSION' added to the title for clarity, the new update has the same title. I like the original title and didn't want to lead people astray.

If you're having trouble finding it, it's accessible via my profile.

There's also an existing Pinterest board for this story, too, which, if you've got a spare few hours, is good for getting the feel for where I've found inspiration.

Anyway, I'll put this story under 'Complete' but won't delete it, so you can enjoy this version and compare the new one!

Thanks,

_Mellowenglishgal_


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